Kermit Davis faced Tennessee and FAU, so I asked him to break down the Sweet 16 matchup | Estes

Think the Sweet 16 will be easy for fourth-seeded Tennessee basketball in March Madness? Looking at the seed numbers and conference affiliations? Check the win-loss record instead.

Ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic is 33-3.

Only three teams have beaten these Owls, and one of them – back on Nov. 11 – was Ole Miss. (The others were UAB and MTSU in Conference USA).

The Rebels were coached then by Kermit Davis, who was let go before the end of the season. Prior to that, Davis also coached against this Tennessee team, losing by only four points. Thus the former long-time MTSU coach, I thought, was an ideal person to ask for a breakdown of this Sweet 16 matchup in New York City. He was good enough to oblige.

Here are four keys to the game that I took from our conversation:

1. Owls' strength vs. Vols' strength

FAU was "a really tough cover" defensively, Davis said, as the Owls like to use four-guard lineups and fire a ton of 3-pointers. Seven different FAU players have attempted at least 93 shots from 3-point range this season. (For comparison, UT has four).

“That’s hard (to defend),” Davis said, “if you’ve got that many different guys that have shot that number of 3s. Tennessee does that well, but that concerns you.”

Having said that, “Tennessee, the way they guarded the other day (vs. Duke), it looked just like the old Tennessee teams we’re all used to playing,” Davis said.

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Only 11 teams in Division I have made more 3-pointers per game than Florida Atlantic (9.7). And as of Monday, no other team was defending the 3-point line better than Tennessee.

The Vols lead the nation by holding opponents to a 26.4% clip behind the 3-point line.

“They do a great job of coaching it,” Davis said of the Vols, “and they’ve got willing defenders. And you add length to that. It’s a little of everything with that: Toughness, experience, schemes, the ability to switch, and I’m sure they’ll do a lot of switching against Florida Atlantic because of those four guards.”

2. Tennessee's turnovers

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the Duke win for Tennessee was the Vols only had nine turnovers, their lowest total in the past six games.

It was the first game in which UT had fewer turnovers than its opponent since a Feb. 28 victory over Arkansas – which, not coincidentally, was the game in which point guard Zakai Zeigler suffered a season-ending knee injury.

More than anything, turnovers could determine how far the Vols continue to progress in March.

“That’d be a huge thing (in this game),” Davis said. “Can Florida Atlantic create some different turnovers just to try to get some easy baskets in transition? … Tennessee does such a good job of setting their halfcourt defense, and that is really critical against FAU, that they aren’t getting transition 3s.”

Vols coach Rick Barnes has been stressing this for a while now. After an SEC Tournament victory over Davis’ former Ole Miss team – during which the Rebels scored 19 points off Vols turnovers – Barnes was clear: “That can’t happen.”

“If we're the defensive team that we want to be and should be,” Barnes said, “we've got to make people play against it. You can't give them the ball and give them a chance to get out in transition, because there's no defense for that. ... The best defense we can have is taking care of the ball.”

3. Fouls for FAU's bigs

FAU is a deep team. But it’s also a guard-heavy team, as Davis noted, typically rotating two sophomore post players in and out during a game: Vladislav Goldin (7-foot-1) and Giancarlo Rosado (6-8).

“Florida Atlantic has got to stay out of foul trouble with those two bigs,” Davis said, “and they’ve been a good rebounding team with playing that small of guards. Can they do that against Tennessee?

“I know the way Rick (Barnes) thinks. They’re going to throw it right at the post and make Goldin guard them early.”

Olivier Nkamhoua and Uros Plavsic each started Tennessee’s first two NCAA Tournament games, and Nkamhoua is coming off a second-half explosion against Duke, scoring 17 of the Vols’ final 19 points.

“He was something the other day. Holy cow,” said Davis of Nkamhoua. “Early in the year, I thought he was the most improved player in our league.”

4. And one more Key for Vols

Davis mentioned one bench player in particular that he views as a potential difference-maker for the Vols in the rest of the tournament: Tyreke Key.

“They need him to really go,” Davis said.

Key has been hit-or-miss this season, but he has scored in double-figures in three of the five games without Zeigler. Only two Tennessee players – Nkamhoua (17.5) and Santiago Vescovi (8.5) – have averaged more than Key’s 7.5 points in the first two NCAA Tournament games.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Will Tennessee basketball beat FAU in Sweet 16? What Kermit Davis says