KNOXVILLE - Tennessee men's basketball coach Rick Barnes probably demands more from Jordan Bone than he does from any other player on the roster.
And the freshman point guard knows even the best performance of his young career won't change those demands.
Bone poured in 23 points and handed out five assists in Tennessee's win Saturday night at Vanderbilt, and as the Volunteers head to Ole Miss it's now about stringing together consecutive quality performances.
"There's some positive, but he's always going to be tough on me," Bone said Monday. "He wants me to be a really good basketball player, so he's not going to let up on me. Not right now. Why would he? We haven't done anything yet.
"He's going to keep pushing me every day."
Barnes and his coaching staff are perhaps the hardest on the Nashville native because he might have the highest ceiling on Tennessee's freshman-laden team.
Bone's development hit an early snag when he missed nine games during the nonconference portion of the schedule. He was sidelined during a stretch of the season when there aren't two games every week. November and December practices are less limited in terms of quantity and intensity and less driven on going over scouting reports.
While the Vols were meshing together and also playing four ranked teams, Bone was a spectator.
"I don't think there's any question that when you miss those games it's hard, it's hard to come back, because your team's moving forward," Barnes said. "You're coming in the game, and any young player, especially, it'd probably be easier for an older guy to come back after nine games like that. But a young guy just getting started in college has to deal with a lot.
"It's a combination of him not still fully grasping what we're trying to get done on both ends. You can sit and watch it all. You can sit in practice, but there's a difference in being out there every day getting the reps in. He needed reps early, and he didn't get a chance to get those."
In his first four games back from the injury, Bone totaled 19 points, seven assists and seven turnovers and made just 30 percent (9-of-30) of his shots from the field, but against the Commodores in his homecoming he was 8-of-12 from the field and 4-of-5 from 3-point range.
Bone was just 1-of-10 on 3s going into the game.
"I guess coming off the performance against Vanderbilt," he said, "you could say that my rust has worn off completely, but I'm still working on my conditioning. I feel like my conditioning could be a lot better.
"I'm pushing myself every day, just working on that."
The next step in Bone's development is playing multiple good games in a row, and Barnes admitted that he's hopeful Saturday was a springboard for Bone but he's unsure how he'll play against the Rebels.
"He's young," the coach said. "That's where those games that he missed, those nine games, those games come at a tough time of year when you really want guys to figure out a lot of this. He missed that, but to say that it's just going to be like that every night, I don't think that right now. I think I would say that about any player.
"You have one game that, if you want to be the kind of player that we think he is and we want him to be, he's got to come back and do it again and again and again. I'd like to think a game like that can give him the confidence, and certainly he knows now what we're looking for. It's something that he can build on."
For Bone and the Vols, it bodes well he's as driven as he is to be successful. Barnes recently said Bone expects perfection and hates falling short of it. It's why he sat next to Barnes and watched the video of the loss at Florida during the team's flight back from Gainesville.
"The first thing is when you lose is you've got to watch film and see you how lost, how you played, what things you did well and what things you did bad," Bone said. "That's the first step. The next step is how you have to win, talking to coaches, talking to your teammates and just having a positive attitude after a loss."
It's easier to be positive after a performance like Bone had at Vanderbilt, but he can't relax and Barnes won't let him relax.
"I can tell you, he's going to do his part," Barnes said. "I think Jordan's tough-minded. I'm hard on him a lot and he's pretty hard on himself, too, to be quite frank, because he wants to get this done."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.