KNOXVILLE - Rick Barnes has more than a few friends in the coaching fraternity, which will happen when you've been in the profession for as long as Tennessee's first-year basketball coach has.
He'll reacquaint himself with one of his buddies tonight.
And the stakes will be higher than when the two coaches usually meet.
The Volunteers face perhaps their sternest test of the season on the West Coast tonight in a showdown with Gonzaga at the "Battle in Seattle," which will pit Barnes against longtime Bulldogs coach Mark Few.
"I've known Mark for a long time," Barnes said after Tennessee beat Florida Atlantic on Wednesday night, "and obviously we scrimmaged him every year I was at Texas - probably the last 10 years, I guess. We've known each other. We know his program, and he knows us.
"Once I got the job here, the one thing that we wanted to do right off the bat was really get the schedule at a level where we want to play a national schedule. I knew people wanted to play a game in Nashville, and he was the first guy that I called. He said absolutely, but they needed someone to play in the 'Battle in Seattle.'"
Tennessee and Gonzaga will play the Nashville game next season, but Barnes will hope to get his first win against Few and against the Zags tonight, though it won't be easy.
The Vols were picked to finish 13th in the Southeastern Conference. The Zags were ranked 12th nationally in the preseason coaches' poll.
"We know they're a big team," Tennessee's Armani Moore said. "They don't really play fast ball, but they have a lot of skilled players. We'll have to make sure we lock into our scouting report."
The Vols left for Seattle on Thursday, so none of the players had seen any video of Gonzaga when they spoke to reporters following Wednesday night's win against FAU.
The two programs have met just three times and not since 2009, so the Vols' knowledge of the Zags, who built their reputation upsetting higher-seeded teams seemingly annually in the NCAA tournament, is pretty limited.
"It's a winning program," said Kevin Punter Jr., Tennessee's leading scorer. "Those guys win their conference pretty much almost every year. Those guys are top of the line in their conference. Great coaching. I've seen them play a few times."
Moore could recall seeing Gonzaga only when Adam Morrison - or "the guy who had that long hair," as Moore remembers him - played there for three seasons starting in 2003-04.
"Other than that," he added, "I don't think I've ever watched Gonzaga play."
Moore also had said prior to Tennessee's visit to Hinkle Fieldhouse against Butler last weekend that he'd never seen the movie "Hoosiers," and he tweeted Thursday that he watched it during the team's flight west.
Barnes is obviously much more familiar with Gonzaga and with Few, who's in his 17th season in Spokane.
They first crossed paths in 1997 during Barnes' fourth and final season at Clemson, when the Zags beat his Tigers in the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Gonzaga beat Texas and Barnes in 2002 and 2006, Kevin Durant's first season playing in Austin.
Under Barnes the Longhorns always scrimmaged against Davidson, then Gonzaga in the preseason.
"Both of those things," Barnes said, "were two of the best things we always did in the preseason."
This encounter actually counts, though, so the friendship between Barnes and Few will go on hold for a couple hours.
"We've just gotten to know each other," Barnes said. "He's a wonderful person and a great guy. We just clicked a little bit."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com