Chris Lofton seemed oddly out of place Friday evening.

There was no basketball court within dribbling distance, no game or practice awaiting his full attention.

There also was the matter of an ironic scheduling coincidence. Not only was the downtown Marriott hosting Tennessee’s basketball banquet; it also was hosting a hot rod convention.

And for anyone that knows Lofton, he’s about as far away from a hot rod as a full-court shot. A classic, maybe. But not a hot rod.

Yet media were on hand, the same group that surrounded the shy shooting guard from Maysville, Ky., throughout his UT career.

That, at least, seemed somewhat familiar surroundings for a star athlete. But Lofton wasn’t answering questions as a basketball player. He was answering questions as a cancer survivor.

“I’d like to be known as a great basketball player, too, but a cancer survivor will mean a lot more to a lot more people,” Lofton said a day after publicly revealing his successful battle against testicular cancer.

Lofton said he spoke up because the story was leaking out, but there was another reason not to hide the truth: inspiration.

“Just to stay strong,” Lofton said, speaking directly to other cancer victims. “It’s not the end of the world. You can beat it.

“It’s going to take time. It’s going to be hard. I took it one day at a time. I treated it like an NCAA tournament game, one game at a time.”

Only those “games” were radiation treatments. Those games meant constant nausea for two months, all the while losing the conditioning that allowed him to be one of the nation’s best college basketball players.

“I’m hurting,” Lofton would text UT trainer Chad Newman, one of the few people aware of Lofton’s condition.

Only there wasn’t much Newman or anyone could do for the pain.

“You’ve got to fight through it,” Lofton said.

So he did, mostly alone. It wasn’t that Lofton didn’t want to tell his teammates. It’s that he couldn’t. That shy thing again.

“I wanted to tell all my teammates,” Lofton said. “I just couldn’t get it out to them. I didn’t know how to start the conversation.”

And there was the early season slump, when fans questioned his play, some more kind than others.

“It was probably the hardest part of it, not being able to play the way I wanted to this year, my senior year, my last year,” Lofton said. “That was one of the most difficult times for me.”

UT coach Bruce Pearl answered the questions as best he could last season — and tolerated more criticism than he could hardly bare.

“Be mindful of the fact that these guys are young,” Pearl said. “Sometimes we think these guys have an ‘S’ on their chest and they don’t.”

The hero that saved the day in this tale was more Clark Kent than Superman.

Had Lofton not been randomly selected by the NCAA for a drug test during the NCAA tournament last March, his story might not have a happy ending. As it turned out, the false positive came as a result of a chemical marker found in cancer patients.

Fortunately, Lofton wasn’t suspended for the failed test, saving him any speculation and embarrassment that would have surely followed. UT took advantage of a appeal process that proved a public relations saving grace.

Before Lofton faced an NCAA suspension, UT had the right to have another sample tested with one of their representatives in attendance.

Now UT officials are thinking of ways to honor Lofton, not defend him. He’s reached all the criteria to have his jersey number retired. That should happen in five years to his No. 5, as per UT’s policy on such issues.

But there could be more.

“We’ve got some ideas floating around,” UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said.

All will pale to Lofton just being able to shoot some hoops and spend time with his family, both of which he views far differently than before.

“It used to be a bad game was the end of the world for me,” Lofton said. “When I went through my cancer, I realized that basketball is fun, but it’s not that big of a deal.

“There are people out there suffering way more than a basketball loss. It just put all things in perspective for me.”

And, Pearl claimed, for everyone else.

“Chris did not need an incident like this to make every day count,” Pearl said. “The rest of us may have needed this lesson.

“Chris Lofton didn’t.”

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© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.