NASHVILLE - After taking up residence in his coach's doghouse, freshman point guard Jordan Bone provided a needed spark for Tennessee in its season-ending loss to Georgia in the Southeastern Conference tournament Thursday.
The Nashville native led the Volunteers with 14 points on four 3-pointers just five days after playing only three minutes in the regular-season finale against Alabama. His display against the Bulldogs was a reminder why many believe he's the point guard of Tennessee's future.
"I've told him you're going to have to earn it," Vols coach Rick Barnes said. "He's really had a couple good days of practice. That's where it all starts, and his biggest thing he has to understand is you can't get tired when you're playing this game. The best players that I've been around, they don't get tired.
"And that's been one of the biggest things he's had to learn to fight through this year and how to fight through fatigue both mentally and physically. Believe me, he has improved tenfold if you go back to where we started in the fall and the spring and even the summer. I think he's showed us all at times. Now it's up to us to get him to understand the game."
Bone's first year with the same program his older brother, Josh, played for during Bruce Pearl's time as the coach began with a 21-point game against UT-Chattanooga and seven points with seven assists against Appalachian State.
Then he missed nine games due to a foot injury, and after scoring 23 points at Vanderbilt in mid-January, his only double-figure scoring games prior to Thursday were at Mississippi State and Kentucky.
His speed to get to the rim and potential as a shooter weren't what caused his role to diminish late in the season.
"The biggest takeaway is just defense," Bone acknowledged. "Defense wins games. If you can't stop anybody, you're not going to play, especially not on this level. You can't get by with being lazy on defense.
"I've really got to lock in next year, watch a lot of film and learn a lot of things for myself from the team from this year and compete a lot more and play better defense next year."
Barnes is demanding of his point guards and even tougher on players he believes can be stars, and Bone qualifies for both of those categories.
Bone acknowledged the transition to the college level was more difficult than he anticipated.
"I feel like I got used to it fairly well," he said. "I've got a lot of learning to do, man. It's just the game of basketball - you've got a lot to learn. You can never not learn from basketball. That's what I love about it."
The Vols are set to return all but one player from this year's team, but Bone's development may be the most important as they look to next season, when the expectations will be higher.
Tennessee could overcome its inconsistency at point guard for only so long, and the only six times all season the Vols scored fewer than 60 points were in the final 10 games as the season tumbled off a cliff.
"We've got to get more consistent with our offense," Barnes said Thursday. "There's no question about it, and that goes back to this time of year. I mean, you watch Georgia play all their games, other than when they've had to patch it together, you know what they're going to every time down the floor and kind of know what their players are going to do.
"We never got into that routine with this group. You guys watched our guard play all year. It was very inconsistent. We've had to work with Robert's (Hubbs) situation. Jordan Bowden was (out). Ever since the last game and the past week and a half we've worked with Shembari (Phillips) at the point, and he didn't get to play today.
"We just never have been consistent with our offensive rhythm, and we've got to get that."
That's why Bone using this offseason to mature, improve at both ends of the floor and build off his promising freshman finale after the ups and downs of the past few weeks is so important to Tennessee's future.
"It's been a learning experience for him," Barnes said. "He missed nine games at the worst possible time you could miss them, but he has showed us enough and I expect him to come back and I expect them all to come back to be much better players than they were right now."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.