BIRMINGHAM, Ala. --- Victor Bailey Jr. won’t be a factor on the floor for Tennessee basketball this season.

The Oregon transfer, a former Top-100 prospect and a four-star guard out of Austin, Texas, is sitting out due to NCAA transfer rules. But that doesn’t mean he won't spend the entire season under the same Rick Barnes microscope that each of his teammates will practice and play under.



“I talk to him all the time about it,” Lamonte Turner said on Wednesday at SEC basketball media day.



“It’s tough to be coached when you have to sit out, the way coach coaches you,” Turner continued. “Because I don’t think other coaches do that, you know?



“I don’t think coaches coach the sit-out player as tough as he coaches the best player on the team. Or the main guy.”



No one knows better than Turner. Both he and Barnes are entering their fifth seasons with the Vols. And he’s been living under that microscope since Day 1.



“Coach coaches the walk-ons, everybody the same, the same treatment,” said Turner, who was forced to sit out as a redshirt during the 2015-16 season. “You would think, ‘Coach, why you spending time coaching him? That don’t make sense. Why?’ But he has a motive for everything.



“I’ve seen it with me. He coached me (tough) my sit-out year. The next year I knew everything. So he has a reason why he does stuff. I talk to VJ a lot about that.”



Bailey is already off to a better start than Turner, which Turner freely admits.



“My first practice I got kicked out,” Turner said with a laugh looking back. “Only player in coach Barnes’ history.”



He left his first practice under Barnes and he went to the locker room. There, he cried.



“I’m not lying,” Turner said. “I really did.”



The memory is still fresh.



“I remember I was playing defense,” Turner said. “It was a one-on-one drill. I fouled a guy and (Barnes) was like stop fouling.”



The ball was checked up. Turner put his hands behind his back — maybe instinctively, maybe out of rebellion — to avoid fouling. And that was that.



“I did it before I knew it,” he said. “I was a little knucklehead, I don’t know. And he kicked me out.”



Turner asked what he did. The response from Barnes, in short, was that he had gotten himself kicked out of practice.



“I go to the locker room and start crying,” Turner said.



But he’s better for it, all these years later.



Turner last season, after dealing with shoulder soreness during the first half of the schedule, started 19 times in 28 games, played 31.0 minutes per game and averaged 11.0 points and 3.8 assists while shooting 42.2 percent from the field.



For three years his numbers have continued to climb while surviving under the watchful eye of Barnes.



Now it’s Turner who is the face of the program entering his fifth and final season, responsible for helping build the Tennessee basketball culture from the ground floor.



It starts on the practice floor. And when practice is over? The switch flips.



“It’s like when practice ends, Coach Barnes doesn’t remember what happened in practice,” Turner said. “He comes over here joking with me, I’m like dude you just kicked me out of practice, I thought you hated me.



“That’s when I learned how on and off Coach Barnes can be. When he gets on the court, he’s locked in.”

