KNOXVILLE - In his first college basketball game, Tennessee point guard Jordan Bone scored 21 points and also learned how demanding his coach can be.
Rick Barnes was less than willing to dole out praise to the freshman for his team-leading scoring performance in the season-opening home loss to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on Friday night.
The Volunteers scored just four fast-break points, and Barnes wants Bone to do a better job of pushing the basketball down the floor, starting with Tuesday night's game against Appalachian State.
"We needed to get some stops, too, to get out and run like that," Barnes said, "but the fact is we need him to get the ball down the court quicker, and he didn't do that as much as we like. We wanted him to attack. As you can see, he's extremely quick. We want him to keep attacking, keep attacking. He's not there yet to do that, but he'll learn.
"People look at his line and see he can shoot the ball, but he's got to pride himself on assist-to-turnover (ratio) and, more than anything, he's got to pride himself on running the team and getting his teammates going and getting them into what we need to do."
Bone made eight of 14 shots and all four of his free throws against the Mocs, and though he had only two turnovers, he managed just one assist. The younger brother of former Vol Josh Bone displayed his offensive skill by hitting a 3, knocking down a couple of mid-range jumpers and showing he can get to the rim.
But he admitted he needs to do a better job running Tennessee's offense and being more vocal on defense. Bone, who graduated from Nashville's Ensworth School, seems to know some criticism comes with the territory of playing point guard for Barnes.
"It's always tough to kind of take that in, but it's a learning process," he said. "He's going to be hard on you because he expects a lot. I've just got to learn from this game."
Barnes lamented Tennessee's lack of player movement and ball movement - the Vols recorded just four assists against UTC - and Bone knows part of his role when he's on the floor is to ensure the offense doesn't stagnate.
"I don't think getting the ball up the floor was a problem," he said. "I feel like just like (it was) going into our offense and running certain plays when we felt like the defense was kind of tired. Our offense is made to break teams down, so I feel like we could have ran more plays.
"I feel like the transition was very effective and we could have ran our transition offense a lot more."
Sophomore forward Kyle Alexander, who had seven points, eight rebounds and four blocked shots in the opener, believes Bone can handle the ups and downs ahead of him this season.
"He's a guy who gets a lot of constructive criticism in practice," he said, "because he's a very skilled point guard and we need him to produce this year a lot. He's a guy who I think is very mature for his age. He comes in and he learns, and I think that's very smart of him and very mature of him to know to look at the stuff he did wrong and the stuff he did right.
"I think he needs to take that and learn from it."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.