Ankle injury kept Lofton with Vols

It appears an ankle sprain was the only thing that kept star guard Chris Lofton from entering the NBA draft last month and not returning for his senior season at Tennessee.

Lofton made the revelation for the first time Tuesday during an interview with WKYT television in Lexington, Ky.

“I was gonna go,” Lofton said from his home in Maysville, Ky. “It was just that my ankle, my injury, slowed me down a lot, and I couldn’t work out for any teams. That forced me to come back.”

Lofton severely sprained his ankle against South Carolina on Jan. 20. The ankle injury sidelined him for four games.

So it wasn’t a big secret when Lofton told a media contingent on April 24 that he was staying at UT. Lofton, who led the SEC in scoring at 20.8 points a game and in 3-pointers per game at 3.42, said he knew all along he was coming back.

Stu Jackson, the NBA’s executive vice president of operations, told Lofton that he would most likely be drafted in the middle of the second round, and that he needed to develop better ball-handling and point guard skills.