Chris Lofton on potential jersey retirement with Vols basketball

Chris Lofton has heard the talk about his jersey being retired at Tennessee.

Really, the former Vols basketball star can’t avoid it. The subject is in his Twitter mentions and comes up in conversation occasionally.

But Lofton insists it doesn’t matter too much to him if or when his No. 5 jersey hangs in the Thompson-Boling Arena rafters.

“It would be a special day,” Lofton said. “I don’t need my jersey retired. Knoxville will always have a special place in my heart. Tennessee will always be a special place for the simple fact that they took a chance on me when no one else would.”

The situation worked out well for Tennessee and likely will lead to Lofton’s jersey eventually being retired. The lightly recruited guard from Kentucky made an SEC-record 431 3-pointers in his career. He scored 2,131 points in four seasons at UT to rank fourth in school history. He was named the SEC player of the year in 2006-07 and earned All-American honors three times.

His accomplishments meet the requirements for having his jersey retired at UT.

But there also is the interesting dynamic of Admiral Schofield currently donning Lofton’s old number.

“We can’t kick him out of it,” Lofton said. “That’s for sure.”

Lofton was in Knoxville this week for his three-day basketball camp at St. Joseph School. Approximately 50 kids from ages 6-16 attended.

Now in its fifth year, the skills-focused camp was delayed from its original late June schedule when Lofton’s latest professional season ran long. Lofton’s Le Mans club rolled to the French Ligue Nationale de Basket championship, with the former UT star scoring 34 points in a crucial Game 3 win in the five-game championship series. The year was a lesson, Lofton said, after he joined the team in November and played 18.6 minutes per game – the fewest of his pro career.

“I really learned that sometimes to have a good team, you are going to have to make sacrifices,” said Lofton, who averaged 8.4 points in 21 games last season with Le Mans. “There were games where I only shot once or twice. It was tough for me. But I started realizing the team was already good when I got there in the middle of the year. They were No. 1 and were playing good. I knew I had to come in and have a role. I couldn’t be selfish and had to sacrifice. I learned that this year. Then toward the end I started playing a lot. It all worked out.”

Lofton has played in at least five countries now during his professional career in Europe, including Spain and Turkey.

The experience has been different from anything he could have imagined, he said after his sixth season overseas.