The sideline that Rick Barnes strode for 17 years is gone.

It was taken with the rest of the Erwin Center when it was demolished and replaced by the Moody Center--Texas' year-old basketball arena where Barnes will be leading his current Tennessee team against his former team on Saturday night (6 p.m. ET, ESPN) in Austin.

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Many of the faces that Barnes worked with more than a decade ago remain, though. Longhorns' third-year coach Rodney Terry is one of them, and though this won't be the first time that the No. 1 Vols (14-1, 1-1 SEC) have had face the Longhorns (11-4, 0-2), since the school fired Barnes nearly 11 years ago, this rendition will be a little bit more meaningful for a couple of reasons.

Tennessee and Texas are now SEC foes, and the Longhorns are winless through two games in their league debut going up against a Vols' team that ended their season in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament in Charlotte a year ago.

For Tennessee, a historic 30-point loss at Florida ended its reign as the only unbeaten team left in Division I college basketball and likely knocked it out of the No. 1 spot after five weeks.

The Vols are eager for a bounce-back performance. Texas wants to win its first SEC game. Something will give Saturday.

"I was thinking this morning, how many different tie-ins we all have within the league with each other," Barnes said. "It is almost like the SEC and some ways, it’s just so many people’s lives have touched each other through the years and a great blessing from God, but happy with where (Texas' staff) are and what they’re doing, but we've got to compete. And I know full well they’re going be ready to do that.”

The ability to compete hasn't been a concern for Barnes, even after Tennessee was out-rebounded by the Gators in a rare role-reversal for the Vols who typically hold the edge in physicality.

The film confirmed as much.

"(The loss) will be good for us if we’re going to learn from it," Barnes said. "And understand that I didn’t have a problem with the effort during the game. I didn’t have one after watching the tape with it...There’s nothing we did in that game that we can’t fix and we need to fix it.”

Though the shootout for both Tennessee or Florida never quite came to fruition, the Vols will have to play a team that shoots--and makes--a lot of 3-pointers.

Texas leads the conference in three-point made percentage, averaging more than 40% per game and ranks second in field goal percentage at 50.3%. Freshman guard Tre Johnson paces the team with 18.4 points an outing.

“(Texas) can shoot the ball. I don’t think there’s any question they can do that, but I think they are different," Barnes said. "They’ve got an explosive, one of the very best players in the country (in Johnson). I see oftentimes people are putting his numbers up against (Kevin Durant’s), which is impressive that anybody would even be on the same line with him because of what he did as a freshman."

MORE FROM VOLREPORT: What Rick Barnes said about Vols' bounce-back, return to Texas

The expectation heading into the Florida game was that Tennessee would have to potentially match it in scoring, but shooting woes early cost the Vols the rest of the way.

It wasn't that the looks were bad. Tennessee had a plenty, especially leading scorer Chaz Lanier, who took the kind of shots that catapulted him to the top of the SEC in scoring just days after scoring a season-high 29 points in the Vols' rout of Arkansas.

Back on the road, it will be paramount for Tennessee to hit those kind of shots early.

"I thought we took some early that really got us off kilter," Barnes said. "The ones that Chaz (Lanier) took early were shots that he’s made all year. I I don’t have a problem with any of the shots that he took early. That’s what he’s been doing all year. I just felt as we got down, we started pressing. And maybe not losing your poise, because I think people think of that as being negative. I think it’s probably more pressing to try to get it quick and try to get something going as opposed to just staying with it.

"Understanding that it’s a long game, a long way to go. And just felt like we just never got on track. But you learn from it. It happens."

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