For Hawaii football players Ikem Okeke and Kalen Hicks, this weekend’s opposing head coach evokes memories of their high school coach.

That’s because UNLV’s Tony Sanchez coached Okeke and Hicks at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas.

“He taught me a lot,” said Okeke, a linebacker and key special-teams player. “We won a couple (national) championships. He knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart coach.”

Hicks, UH’s No. 1 rover, marveled at Sanchez’s double-espresso personality.

“He’s full of energy,” Hicks said. “He doesn’t like being lackadaisical. … He’s old school. When I came into high school under him it was kind of new for me. But I adjusted. … He’s just gritty.”

Okeke and Hicks are sophomores who have known each other since middle school. Okeke’s parents are doctors who immigrated to the United States before he was born. Okeke and his family moved from Reno to Las Vegas when he was in eighth grade in 2011.

Hicks, who was born and raised in Las Vegas, asked to attend Bishop Gorman after he watched one of the Gaels’ football games.

“It was a blessing,” Hicks said of enrolling at Bishop Gorman. “It’s a good school. We had all of the facilities to get better. You have to be humble about it, and take advantage of what you’ve got there. It’s a good (football) program. It taught me a lot about working hard and stuff I do today.”

UFC president Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta, a former UFC CEO who owns 21 casinos in three states, are among the heavy financial donors to Bishop Gorman. Okeke and Hicks were teammates of the sons of rapper and music producer Snoop Dogg and former NFL quarterback Randall Cunningham.

“I used to go over to (Snoop’s) house, and they’d have good food over there,” Okeke said. “(Snoop) was funny. Everything you might see on his social media, that’s pretty much him all day, every day. He’s a happy person. Happy with life.”

Okeke and Hicks said there were “high expectations” playing for a football powerhouse. “A lot of discipline, too,” Hicks said.

Okeke said: “Those were some of the most fun days I had in football. Playing for the No. 1 team in the country was all good.”

Their junior season — 2014 — was the last at Bishop Gorman for Sanchez, who then accepted the head coaching job at UNLV. The Gaels went 15-0 that year.

The following season, the Gaels also went 15-0 under Sanchez’s younger brother Kenny, sharing the national title with Katy (Texas) High.

“His little brother, coach Kenny, had even more energy than coach Tony did,” Okeke said. “They always came through with a lot of energy. And they tried to make sure we knew how to win.”