If you build your team around skill offensively, you want to play slower to increase your advantage over your opponent on that end of the floor. Slow tempo means the opponent gets less possessions too, and if you're more efficient than your opponent, you win...it's zero surprise Purdue, UConn and especially UVA play a slower tempo. It shrinks the game and makes it very difficult on your opponent. If you have a lot of athleticism, but not a lot of skill, you play up tempo. You want to create as many opportunities to play in transition as possible, because that's where you'll be most efficient. Schools like Kentucky, Arizona, Memphis and FSU fall in that category. What you wouldn't want to do is play high tempo with a roster built around offensive skill. It opens the door for your opponent to create runs and anomalies that skew the score in their favor. You also wouldn't want to play a slow tempo with a bunch of athletes who aren't as skilled. It makes your team inefficient and shrinks the game so your opponent can simply out-efficient you to death. So the battle for most games is a battle of tempo. It is much easier to slow a team down than speed a team up. So that favors the teams who already play a slow tempo. So faster tempo teams will press to increase the tempo and shorten the shot clock to try and reduce efficiency. Slower teams will value defense in transition rather than offensive rebounds so you keep the game slow and reduce transition opportunities. The highly skilled teams are going to play slow...as they should