Tennessee basketball: Yves Pons development is Vols biggest story through two games
With a 2-0 start, Tennessee basketball has gotten help from lots of people. But Yves Pons’s improvement should be the Volunteers’ biggest story.
Don’t look now, but the most efficient scorer for Tennessee basketball is not Lamonte Turner or Jordan Bowden. He’s not even Josiah-Jordan James, the five-star combo guard who joined the team. Through two games, Yves Pons has that title.
While Jordan Bowden stole the show Tuesday night with 26 points overall and 19 in the Vols’ red-hot second half to beat the Murray State Racers, Pons was the do-it-all player. He added 19 points, shot three-of-four from the three-point line, and added four rebounds and four blocks.
Through Tennessee basketball’s first two game, Pons is second only to Bowden on the team in scoring. But it’s close, as Bowden is averaging 18 points a game while Pons averages 17 points. Meanwhile, Pons has hit four of six three-pointers. Oh, and he’s averaging five and a half rebounds and three and a half blocks a game.
Once a four-star from France, Pons was a very athletic player his first two years on Rocky Top at 6’6″ 215 pounds, allowing Barnes to play him anywhere from the two through the four. But he was wild with the ball, could not shoot at all, and was limited in what he could do.
This year, Barnes has been forced to run Pons at the four and go small. Succeeding there when he goes small requires a level of control that he hadn’t shown in the past. It’s there now. Not only is Pons 67 percent from three, but he’s 77.8 percent from the field overall. And he only has three turnovers on the season.
During the offseason, Pons spent time with the French Under 20 National Team. Combine that with Barnes’s ability to develop talent, and the ingredients for him to make a major jump were there. Now that he’s done it, the Vols could be surprisingly very good.
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It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal this is. Two of the biggest things Tennessee basketball needed this year was for Pons to develop his game and Lamonte Turner to become a true point guard. We knew what Bowden would be as a primary scoring option, so nights like Tuesday night weren’t shocking.
Turner showed he could as well Tuesday, along with Pons and Bowden with 14 assists and only five points to go with no turnovers. But he did the opposite in the opener with five turnovers. And his scoring efficiency has been horrible ever since he’s fully moved over to point guard . So the jury is still out on him being able to play the point consistently while remaining a scoring threat.
Pons, meanwhile, has gone above and beyond what Barnes needed him to do to develop this year based on what we’ve seen from him through two games. If he keeps this up, he could become the most complete player on the team.
Admiral Schofield’s graduation always left an opening for a wing player, and Pons was always in line to replace him. The wing moving to the four just added to his responsibilities. But he’s shouldered that burden so far, and he has done an incredible job of doing it.
If Pons’s development is real, then Barnes’s plan to go small will work out perfectly. We know that Pons can be very effective on the defensive side of the ball, as he has always been a consistent shot blocker. Not losing that while also stepping up his game on offense is a big deal. Tennessee basketball could be much better than expected thanks to him.