Crisco,
After seeing that his man-to-man defense was being shredded, Wojo made the right call going to zone. I know you still maintain it was a 2-3, but after starting with both guards on top of the arc, when the ball was passed to one side or the other, the weak side guard dropped top defend the high post area, which is classic 1-1-3. On almost every pass one of the two top defenders dropped like that creating the 1-1-3. Early in the game the off-ball guard did not drop and cover the high post - more of a straight 2-3, which is why we got burned there a few times when Hayes flashed to the free throw line.
Anyway, I agree that we should not be focused on the long term, but on winning games now. He can always switch to man when he has the personnel to make it work, whether that's next year or the following year, whenever. Of greater importance is building a winning culture, a mindset of winning rather than losing. Success breeds success.
I'm not sure I agree with you about only needing 15 minutes each practice to work on zone because the zone can be tweaked based on the opponent. Against Bucky, we automatically doubled the low post and the short corner. We had two because of Kaminsky and even Hayes, as well as Dekker. In other games we might not need to double down there, especially with Luke. Plus, if there are double teams, the double can come from different places, depending on the rest of the opponent's line up. Maybe Boeheim never changed his rotations. I don't know.
As far as why we didn't zone UW in the past, most of the time we had superior athletes who were able to stay in front of their man and keep UW's guards and wings from penetrating. Plus, UW almost always had a guy like Brust who could just kill a zone. Gasser, Jackson, and Koenig can all shoot the trey, but none of them is a Brust.
Plus we needed to counter their incredible height advantage. Playing Kaminsky and Hayes and Dekker straight up man would have been very difficult, especially with all the off-ball picks Bo employs. UW always has a slew of bigs, but both Hayes and Kaminsky can score down low. In the past many of UW's bigs were not as potent around the hoop.