Detrick Mostella’s first impression was everything that he, and Tennessee, could have asked for.

In the Vols’ opener of the 2014-15 season against VCU in the Veterans Classic in Annapolis, Maryland, the then-freshman came off the bench and tallied a team-high-tying 17 points in 22 minutes.

Mostella, though, didn’t fair nearly as well over the last the 30 games of his freshman campaign, averaging just 2.9 points per game.

“(UT coach Rick Barnes) basically told me it’s the turning point,” Mostella said Monday. “Either I’m going to step my game up some, or he’s going to have to find another guard that can step their game up this year.”

Mostella, however, didn’t step up right away.

Through the first eight games of the season, the 6-foot-1, 175-pound guard averaged just 3.1 points per game and played only three minutes in the Vols’ 94-86 loss to Butler in Hinkle Fieldhouse.

“Back when I was in a hole, coach was talking in the locker room, and he was like, ‘There’s a lot of people on our team stealing money,’” Mostella said. “So I started thinking, `Am I stealing money?’ Because he was saying we are on scholarship, so we should do things much harder.

“I asked him one day and he was like, ‘You’ve been stealing money a little bit.’ So then it just gave me the opportunity to take it to another level and I’ve felt like I’ve done that the past couple games.”

Mostella credits a one-on-one conversation with Barnes shortly after that Butler game as his real turning point. The message was simple: this is his crossroads.

Since then, the former four-star guard has been playing up to that recruiting rating.

Over the Vols’ last nine games, Mostella has scored in double-figures seven times, including a career-high 24-point performance against Mississippi State in place of an injured Armani Moore on Saturday.

But that doesn’t mean that he has mastered the offensive end as evidence by an exchange early in that contest with the Bulldogs.

After getting it going early, the Decatur, Alabama, native fired a heat-check three and missed. Moments later, he found himself on the bench.

“I took him out because he was feeling good,” Barnes said Monday. “I said to him ‘Look, that’s not a good shot. I don’t want you to shoot yourself out of having a good shooting game.’

“I think when you take bad shots then you have good ones there’s that doubt there that you’ve missed two in a row but they were two that you probably shouldn’t have taken.”

Ultimately, though, it’s been Mostella’s defense that has prevented him from reaching that next level and he understands that.

Mostella said Monday that his defense is a “day-to-day thing,” and that it is “getting better every day, but it takes patience.”

“We know that he can shoot the ball,” Barnes said. “He’s like any shooter. He can have games where he can get going, and other games he might not make as many. What we’ve tried to tell these guys from day one is, ‘How do you affect the game when you don’t have the ball in your hand? How can you affect it?’”

Nothing, though, has been as critical to Mostella’s recent impact on the Vols then his uptick in maturity.

“(This year), I just came in with a smile, doing everything right,” Mostella said. “Just loving my teammates, appreciating everything they’ve done for me, and the things I’ve done for them.

“Last year, I wasn’t the person to be liked, because I felt like I should’ve played last year at times, but I really shouldn’t have played because I wasn’t doing anything productive.”

The difference is starting to show and Mostella is starting to earn that money rather than steal it.