Texas hosts No. 1 Tennessee and former head coach Rick Barnes

The Longhorns and Vols go head to head for the fourth time in the last three years.

The people with the power to decide such things always want to see the Texas Longhorns play the Tennessee Volunteers and former Longhorns head coach Rick Barnes.

The SEC and the Big 12 wanted to make the matchup happen for years in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, but Barnes refused for years until the Erwin Center was set to close, the building in which Barnes coached for 17 years.

Since that 2022 matchup, a 52-51 victory for the Horns, Texas faced Barnes and Tennessee in Knoxville on a return trip two years ago, and in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year, a storyline that the selection committee just couldn’t resist.

Now Barnes and his No. 1-ranked Volunteers are part of an historic week for the Longhorns in their new conference — one program playing games against the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the AP Top 25 poll in the same calendar week has only happened six times in the last 30 years. The opportunity for Texas is historic, too, as the Horns have never beaten the top-ranked team in the AP poll.

Saturday’s game, which tips at 5 p.m. Central on ESPN, also marks the first time that Barnes will coach in the new Moody Center, which opened in 2022, a scheduling imperative for the SEC, which plays an unbalanced league schedule in contrast to the double round robin employed by the Big 12 for so many years.

“It’ll be different in terms of, when I think about going back to Texas, I think of the Erwin Center, where we were for 17 years. I’m sure I’m going see a lot of people that are still there that I know, but that’s part of it,” Barnes said on Thursday.

One of those people Barnes knows, of course, is his former longtime assistant Rodney Terry, now in his second full season as the Texas head coach after leading the Longhorns to the Elite Eight in 2023 before having his interim label removed.

“Great respect for his staff,” Barnes said. “A lot of love there because we spent many, many hours together through the years and happy at the success they’re having.”

Terry’s staff includes another former Barnes assistant, Frank Haith, who coached under the winningest head coach in program history from 2001 to 2004 before spending 18 years as the head coach at Miami, Missouri, and Tulsa.

But whether the burnt orange and white faithful perceive the current iteration of Texas basketball as a success is another story with the Horns mired in an 0-2 start to their time in the SEC and two more ranked opponents looming after the Vols.

The historic nature of the competition level Terry’s team is facing likely matters little to a fanbase seeking some roundball ego gratification as a distraction from whinging about Quinn Ewers, the type of dynamic Barnes surely knows well after having to record videos begging fans to leave the rafters of the Erwin Center for a lower bowl devoid of fickle football donors.

Tennessee’s first loss of the season, a 30-point blowout by No. 8 Florida on Tuesday in Gainesville, knocked the Volunteers from the team’s position as the final unbeaten team in college basketball while providing a blueprint for that Longhorn ego gratification.

It involves the type of stifling defense that Texas has struggled to accomplish in SEC play as Tennessee shot 21.4 percent from the floor, including a 13.8-percent mark from three-point range, and taking advantage of opportunities in the open court with Florida notching a 22-3 edge in fast-break points.

The Horns do boast a red-hot senior forward in Arthur Kaluma, who posted collegiate career highs in points (34), field goals made (12-16), and three-point field goals made (5-6) while adding eight boards, two assists, and two blocks in 38 minutes during Tuesday’s home loss to Auburn.

Star freshman guard Tre Johnson, however, has struggled through his first two games of conference, failing to make a three-pointer for the first two times in his collegiate career (0-8) and making just 7-of-26 shots (26.9 percent). An inability to get into the paint to secure easy baskets or get to the free-throw line — five of Johnson’s seven free-throw attempts against Texas A&M came on a foul shooting a three-pointer and following a technical foul — have kept Johnson from finding his rhythm as a shooter.

For Tennessee, North Florida transfer Chaz Lanier is a pure scoring guard who leads the team in scoring at 19.6 points per game. The Nashville product is a two-outcome player in terms of his usage rate — shoot or miss — with a low assist rate and a low turnover rate.

The playmaker for the Volunteers is a familiar foe for the Horns — diminutive point guard Zakai Zeigler, who ranks fifth nationally in assists per game at 7.5, but is also shooting a career-low 28.7 percent from three-point range.

Overall, Tennessee has a familiar profile for a Barnes-coached team as not particularly efficient from three, but strong on defense, ranking second nationally in opposing effective field-goal percentage, first in three-point defense, and eighth in block rate.

The defensive prowess is a major contributor factor to a 69-percent win probability for Saturday’s game against Texas, according to BartTorvik.com, with FanDuel slotting Tennessee as a 4.5-point favorite as Barnes seeks to push his record to 3-1 against his old program.