Definitely. I have done it by accident. More than once... LOL
I started out on Zorin, coming from Windows.
That was on Core, Gnome desktop. For me, personally, it was a terrible start. As you say, Gnome was buggy, resource heavy, not user friendly and often counter-intuitive.
I struggled with it a lot and those first three months of learned were very rough.
I recall clearly stating in a thread on the old forum that I Hated Zorin OS.
About 4 months in for whatever reason, I decided to switch to Zorin Lite. Suddenly, my OS was under my control, everything worked better, was user friendly and settings and customization were easy.I continued using XFCE on Zorin lite for the rest of the first year learning Linux. That was around when I did the distro hopping, and tried out Mint 20. I disliked Cinnamon Desktop. But again, for reasons to do with making themes that were more complete for more desktops, I installed Cinnamon on Zorin Lite. As I learned how to really tweak and customize it, and with XFCE moving to CSD's and a gnome-clone style with 4.16, I switched over to just using Cinnamon. That is my year and 3/4 experience in a nutshell.
sudo apt remove gnome
Would get rid of Zorin Desktop and all other integrated portions. Guess how I learned.
sudo apt remove zorin-os-desktop
Might be the better way to go- with installation being the reverse of the removal.
If you like, you can
sudo apt install zorin-os-lite-desktop
on Core and then just log in to the Zorin lite D.E. instead of Gnome.