March Madness: 5 advantages Vols have in South Region of the Sweet 16

2. Oregon plays fast. Virginia and Purdue play physical. The Vols can do both.

This builds a bit off of our previous slide, but it’s something worth taking a look at. The Vols can play the pace of either opponent they are facing this weekend, and that’s a huge positive for Rick Barnes’s team.

The Virginia Cavaliers are known for tough, hard-nosed defense under Tony Bennett. That also holds true for the Purdue Boilermakers, to a lesser degree, under Matt Painter. But with big, physical guys like Grant Williams, Admiral Schofield and Kyle Alexander along with Yves Pons off the bench, Tennessee basketball can match that.

What if they run into the Oregon Ducks, though? Dana Altman is known for turning up the tempo, and we have seen the Vols struggle with such tempo at times this year. Just look at the Iowa Hawkeyes in the second half or the Auburn Tigers twice.

However, teams that get them with tempo usually have a ton of depth and do it on a quick turnaround. Oregon tries to go deep, but it’s caliber of depth is not the same as other teams due to the injury to Bol Bol from early in the season.

So the Vols have an advantage against them as well. If a team is not deep with quality talent, they have the guards to be able to handle an up-tempo game. And, as we already mentioned, they can get physical with anybody. That diverse play really favors them in this tournament because they can make other teams uncomfortable. But nobody can make them uncomfortable.