Hitting the hardwood with the intriguing Longhorns

The big picture: The women's team is ranked No. 9 nationally, and the men's squad is finding its footing ahead of a tricky stretch.

Saturday night sees Rick Barnes return to Austin, the coach who worked with the men's team for nearly two decades and now helms the 18th-ranked Tennessee Volunteers.

• Expect warm applause for Barnes, whose UT teams were generally very good — routinely qualifying for the NCAA tournament — but often underperformed in the national spotlight.
• How else to describe teams that featured Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge?
• Unranked UT has had a couple key recent victories, and the next two weeks against five ranked opponents will test whether head coach Chris Beard and this version of the Longhorns can make a postseason run.

Meanwhile: The women's squad runs a gauntlet of its own, with a game at Oklahoma this weekend and back-to-back match-ups against its nemesis Baylor next weekend.

• On Wednesday, the Longhorns held Kansas State to just 48 points — a few days after the Wildcats saw one of their players go for a record-setting 61.

What they're saying: "It brings joy to my heart to see them play like that," Longhorns women's coach Vic Schaefer said. "To see them enjoy it, to see them fired up about it."