KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — It will be the second year in a row that Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes and his former assistant, and now-head coach at Texas, Rodney Terry, will face each other.
The two met last season in Knoxville and the season prior to that, Terry was an assistant at Texas when Barnes and the Vos played the Longhorns in Austin, Texas.
This season it will be in the NCAA Tournament with both teams trying to make the Sweet 16.
Barnes was the head coach at Texas from 1998-2015. From 2002-2011, Terry coached under Barnes for the Longhorns. The team reached a Final Four and had some national Player of the Year winners in T.J. Ford and Kevin Durant.
Terry thinks the world of Barnes.
"He has always been someone who is so lighthearted," Terry said. "As great a coach as coach is, and he is a future Hall of Famer and should be a Hall of Famer already with 800 wins, but he is an even better person."
He used to take recruiting visits with Barnes. Terry shared a funny story with WBIR about a time they went to a recruit's house.
"We went into the kid's home and the mom was like, 'I'm going to ask you a lot of tough questions.' I said, 'Coach she is going to ask you a lot of questions.' Coach was like no problem and mom has like 1,000 questions," Terry said." Academic questions, questions about where he is going to live, all these questions. We leave out of the house and coach says to me, 'Man RT, if she wanted to trip me up all she had to do was ask me what his name was.'"
The two saw each other in the hallways of the Spectrum Center on Friday ahead of the game on Saturday. Barnes took Terry's glasses off his face and told him they were fake, and that he only wore them for style. The friendship is evident, but when the two meet up on gameday, it will be all competition.
Tennessee and Texas play at 8 p.m. in Charlotte on Saturday. The game will be televised on CBS.
