This is the inaugural year for the award, voted on by the SEC Athletic Directors. Congrats, Chris! What a great representative for the University of Tennessee and Volunteer athletics.
http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2008/jun/10/lofton-gets-sec-sportsmanship-award/
and played the 2007-2008 season after offseason surgery and radiation treatments. He lost 15 lbs and had his last treatment in June, just before he went to the Pan-Am tryouts and was cut. He was too weak to play like himself.
He didn’t want anyone to know and refused to let his teammates down by not playing. What an unbelievable young man.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?id=3376961
EDIT (5/2): Kentucky blogger A Sea of Blue has a phenomenal post on Lofton’s story. A very classy tribute from a heated rival.
This is a guest post by friend and reader of The BruceBall Blog BDV. Thanks for contributing these special words for our graduating seniors, BDV.
It has been said that if you have a basketball player who stays for four years, you made an error in recruiting. This year’s UT squad is making that statement sound laughable.
They were Buzz Peterson recruits- and not even one of his better classes, on paper anyway.
Three stars, two stars, and no stars. That’s how Rivals summed up the class that will be honored in Knoxville on Sunday.
Jordan Howell was the highest rated of the three. A fundamentally sound, yet undersized an under-athletic guard who probably can’t even touch the rim at the top of his standing vertical jump. And yet, where would we be without him- especially in the past two years? While Ramar Smith had his struggles, Jordan filled in admirably. Without him, we lose several games early in this season, and we’re certainly not looking at a #1 seed right now.
Jajuan Smith had a choice: Walk on at UTC, or walk on at UT. While that may sound like a no brainer today, four years ago it wasn’t so cut and dried. Quite simply, UTC was the better team, and they proved it head to head. In Buzz Peterson’s last season, Jajuan only saw the floor during mop-up time. Who would’ve guessed back then that in three years, he’d be the heart and soul of an SEC Championship team?
Everyone in America must know Chris Lofton’s story by now. Spurned by the big boys in his home state of Kentucky (and everywhere else for that matter), UT beat out Arkansas State for his services. Could anyone foresee back then that he would go on to become the best shooter in SEC history?
As long as Bruce Pearl is at UT, we’re not likely to have another class like this one. We’re now recruiting 4 and 5 star, top 100 guys almost exclusively. And while it’s great that we’re now pulling in that kind of talent, the sad flipside of that coin is that we’ll probably be missing out on guys like Howell, Smith, and Lofton in the future.
They’re the last class to be here for the hard times. Duke Crews doesn’t know what it’s like to play in front of 20,000 empty seats. Tyler Smith wasn’t around to see UK fans outnumber us in our own building. Wayne Chism wasn’t there to see mens’ basketball come in an apathetic 4th in fan interest behind football recruiting, football spring practice, and the Lady Vols. Howell, Smith, and Lofton endured all those indignities and more.
They were Buzz Peterson recruits- but they became prototypical Bruce Pearl players. They brought little to the program in terms of talent, but have made a bigger positive impact than any class that has come before them, and likely any to follow.
And now, we have only 10 more games (at most) to see Jordan Howell, Jajuan Smith, and Chris Lofton play. Enjoy them while you can.
Yes, definitely. It’s not so much the fact that he hit 8 threes against NCAT, but the fact that he attempted 20. An aggressive Lofton looking for his shots is what we have seen in the past. He had been hesitant in the early games this year and that’s what concerned me far more than his misses.
On the season, Lofton is now 23-63 (36.5%) from downtown. That’s not great and is far below his career percentage, but keep in mind that he was only 3-17 after 3 games, not taking (5 per game) or hitting (1 per game) nearly enough as the leader of this team. Since then, he is 20-46 (43.5%), very close to his career average. He’s hitting 5 per game and taking almost 12, which I think is a good sign of things to come.
It was clear against NCAT that Lofton was given the green light by Pearl, taking any shot that was there. I think there are two reasons for this: one, because NCAT was very loosely defending the perimeter, and two, because Lofton needed to shoot himself back into the forefront on this team. He did so late in the first half, hitting 6 threes in 4 minutes and very nearly putting the game away before halftime.
With Western Kentucky, Xavier, and Gonzaga fully on the radar now, it’s about time we see Lofton getting aggressive and looking to score. We will need his attitude and his uncanny shooting if we are to finish December with just 1-2 losses. Tyler Smith is carrying part of the load, and I think those two will work very well together as the season goes on. JaJuan Smith will keep us in games and be a very solid player on both ends of the floor. But Lofton is still the dominant figure on the Vol basketball team, and I think he has finally realized how important it is for him to maintain that role.
Watch out, Louisiana-Lafayette. The 6-foot-2-inch (if you give him a box to stand on) sleeping giant is wide awake and ready to put daggers into any opponent that takes the floor with him. And not a moment too soon.
I’ve read and heard some concerns from Big Orange fans about Chris Lofton. Why hasn’t he been shooting the lights out and putting up 20+ in the exhibitions and against Temple? Has he lost it?
I don’t think players just “lose it,” and Bruce doesn’t seem concerned. So why should we, as fans, be worried about him? He’s clearly trying to get his teammates who need the experience more involved. It becomes even less worrisome when you look at what Lofton did last year in the beginning of the year:
He got off to a very slow start, didn’t get too involved, and didn’t find a groove in these games at all. Through 3 games, he was averaging less than 9 points. This year, he’s averaging a little over 10 through the first 3. He wound up with a pretty decent year last year, as I recall. He exploded in the 2nd regular season game for 30 points against Fordham, and while he was healthy he scored at least 13 in every game for the remainder of the year (except Butler- 8 points).
And yes, we were worried about him last year too. For the first month of the season, as I recall, people were questioning if he was okay, even saying he shouldn’t be driving so much and should just be shooting 3s. And he turned out just fine, ladies and gents. Let’s not jump the gun and make assumptions about him this year. He’ll come around, sooner rather than later. By the time BruceBall travels to New Jersey for big games against WVU and possibly Texas, Lofton will be back to his usual practice of making sick shots and clutch plays to put daggers in opponents’ hearts.
