The Tennessee basketball team's first season under head coach Rick Barnes will include a trip to the West Coast, as the Volunteers will face Gonzaga in that school's annual "Battle in Seattle" Dec. 19 at KeyArena.
Tickets go on sale to the general public Friday, Sept. 18, through TicketMaster.
Gonzaga has hosted a non-conference opponent at the Battle in Seattle for each of the past 12 seasons. This year's clash marks a rematch of the 2007 event, in which 11th-ranked Tennessee defeated the Bulldogs 82-72. It is one of only four losses for the Zags in the event's history.
Gonzaga is coming off a school-record 35-3 season accompanied by a record 22-game win streak, West Coast Conference regular-season and tournament titles and a trip to the Elite Eight. The Zags, under the direction of longtime head coach Mark Few, return leading scorer Kyle Wiltjer, leading rebounder Domantas Sabonis and two-year starter Przemek Karnowski.
Tennessee trails its all-time series with Gonzaga 1-2, dating to that 2007 meeting. The Vols suffered two losses to the Bulldogs during the 2008-09 campaign, with one coming at the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Florida, and the other taking place in Knoxville.
Interestingly, the Vols' most recent West Coast appearance also took place on Dec. 19. On that date in 2009, Tennessee was defeated at Southern California.
In addition to the Battle in Seattle, Barnes' debut season at Tennessee also includes non-conference trips to Georgia Tech (Atlanta), Butler (Indianapolis) and TCU (Fort Worth) as well as two games at the Barclays Center Classic in Brooklyn, New York (opponents TBD).
