He pivots against a retreating Cumberland defense, decides his team needs points and he's the best man to do it. Leaning forward, he dashes down the middle of the court, weaving through pawing defenders, splitting a potential double team and cashing in a drive of sheer determination.

Cheers from the crowd, er, private gathering, of maybe 100 fans -- and that's being generous -- echo in the cavernous Mid-South Coliseum. Crichton, a small school in Memphis playing its first basketball season as a member of the NAIA, is in the midst of scoring the first 15 points in an overtime victory that had gotten way too close for comfort.

Loe finishes with a double-double -- 20 points and at least 10 dives in the floor from loose balls, charges and being knocked down on drives -- and is all smiles after he's the last man out of the locker room.

"This season, I have nothing on my mind when I go play a game," a content Loe said. "Basketball is fun again. I was a fish out of water for awhile, but I'm kind of back where I'm supposed to be. It's like I've come full circle."

From obscurity to obscurity.

Out of nowhere

Six years, five coaches, four colleges and one high school ago, Loe was a home-schooled student and a self-taught basketball player living with his parents and three sisters in Como, Miss.

He learned the game's fundamentals by watching a series of teaching tapes done by his hero, the late "Pistol" Pete Maravich of LSU, still the NCAA's leading scorer and one of the NBA's greatest 50 players.

That was before an area basketball coach, recognizing Loe's raw talent when he played in a little-known league for home schooled players, got Loe an invitation to the prestigious ABCD camp in the summer of 2000. There, playing against the best high school players in the nation, he dazzled college coaches with his one-on-one skills.

And before he attended Bartlett High as a senior, leading the school to a state championship in 2001. And before he moved on to Ole Miss later in '01, transferred to Northwest Mississippi Community College in '03, signed with Middle Tennessee State in '04 and then transferred to Crichton for this season.

Every coach that Loe has played for, from former Bartlett coach Hubie Smith, to Ole Miss' Rod Barnes, to Crichton's Jeff Walker, can't say enough good things about Loe, who's averaging 19 points for a Crichton team that is 14-8. His engaging personality and his sweet disposition have made him a locker room favorite.

Then, there's the 6-3 Loe's basketball skills.

An explosive first step. A smooth shooting stroke well beyond the 3-point line. A fearless driver. Mouth-dropping jumping ability that caused Crichton and Northwest Mississippi teammate Brian Gibbs to recall the first time he played with the shaggy-haired, baggy-britches Loe. He was "dunking on people, not breakaway dunks, but on people," Gibbs said.

Yet the one thing almost all of Loe's coaches understood too late about him was where he placed basketball on the list of his priorities.

Maybe it was because Loe was sheltered so long from the high-stakes world of college basketball, where recruiters track kids in AAU programs from the time they're in junior high school. But to Loe, basketball was and always will be an enjoyable affair where he can merely pick up a ball and play.

He has never minded working on his game, just like he has diligently tried to perfect his skateboarding or his guitar-playing. But along the way, with each team and every coach that has tried to reach him, Loe discovered the truth about himself -- he wanted basketball as part of a varied life, and that just wasn't possible in Division 1 where the game consumes players.

"One of Jonathan's college coaches told me that he didn't know what was going on in Jonathan's mind," said Danny Loe, Jonathan's father. "I asked the coach, 'What do you mean? Is he not working hard in practice? Does he have a bad attitude?'

"The coach said, 'No, he works harder than anybody else in practice. He has a great attitude.' So I said, 'What's the problem?' The coach said, 'Well, Jonathan doesn't come to the gym and hang out with the other guys.' I said, 'Have you told him to do that?' The coach said, 'No, he just doesn't do that.'

"I think in the last few years, Jonathan has searched for basketball perfection. To him, it's being able to go out and play as hard as he can play in the open-court style he likes to play. He gets a reward from that. But he can also be the man away from the court that he wants to be."

It happened in a blink

Every kid who ever dreams of playing Division 1 basketball would like to close his eyes one night, and then wake up the next morning with a mailbox full of letters from fawning Division 1 coaches.

That's what happened to Loe after his ABCD camp performance.

"My dream was to just play college basketball, like at LSU, because I was a big fan of 'Pistol' Pete, but it never occurred to me of what it entailed to play in college," Loe said. "Then from the ABCD camp from until I went to Ole Miss, it was a blur.

"All of a sudden, I was getting letters from all these SEC schools. A lot of them were just letters, and I probably wasn't going to get a call. But I didn't know that. Every day when I got a letter, I was genuinely excited. It was like Christmas to me.

Loe signed during the early signing period with Ole Miss, but he still had a lot of flaws in his game when he decided to attend Bartlett High as a senior.

"When Jonathan came to us, he knew nothing about defense," Smith said. "I told his dad when I first saw him play the previous spring that Jonathan had the potential to be the best player in our league if he came to Bartlett. But at that point, he'd be sitting on our bench, because he couldn't guard anybody.

"He couldn't stop anybody one-on-one. He knew nothing about team defense. He knew nothing about team offense."

After about a semester of Hubie ball, there were games the last part of the season where Loe carried his team, especially in the state tournament when he won the Most Valuable Player award.

"Jonathan was a quick learner and one of the two best athletes I've ever coached," Smith said. "The kids on our team took to him quickly, because Jonathan is one of the funniest guys I've been around."

One night in a game at Oxford (Miss.) High, Loe scored 37 points with Barnes, his future college coach, in the stands. Barnes saw potential, not immediate stardom. And when Loe reported as a freshman in the fall, his enthusiasm for the game waned when he was redshirted.

Even though his family, his girlfriend and future wife (the former Betsy Grear) and Barnes told him to be patient, Loe wasn't used to sitting. He took the redshirt as a personal affront, like he was being told he wasn't good enough.

The redshirt came off Loe for the 2002-03 season. But even the thrill of getting limited playing time in some of his dream venues, like Kentucky's Rupp Arena and LSU's Maravich Assembly Center, wasn't enough.

He pined for Betsy. And though he developed toughness and became a vastly better defender -- something which he thanks Barnes for now -- he didn't like Barnes' deliberate offense. Nothing felt right, so in February of that season after playing in 18 games and averaging 1.7 points, Loe decided to transfer.

"I was disappointed because Jonathan didn't give himself time to mature," Barnes said recently. "Kids like Jonathan see the 'right now' and I see what we could look like getting him bigger and stronger and ready to play.

"I really thought the sky was the limit for Jonathan. He would have been a kid, that when he became a junior and was playing all the time, other coaches would say, 'Where did you get him from?'"

Loe's 2003-04 season at Northwest Mississippi re-kindled his passion for the game. Betsy had transferred to Ole Miss from Georgia ("I felt bad she came home to Ole Miss and I left there," Jonathan said), and he was able to play in a fast-breaking system.

It was no surprise he averaged 14.6 points and 4.5 assists, was MVP of the Region 23 tournament, named a junior college all-American and led his 30-4 team to seventh place at the national tournament.

"At Northwest, I knew I was going to play, and there wasn't any real pressure," Loe said. "If I was on defense and I got beat to the basket, I wasn't coming out of the game. It was just go out, play and let things come to me.

"Then I got recruited by Division 1 schools. The whole thing happened again."

He settled on Middle Tennessee, where his mother's father knew the father of Middle coach Kermit Davis Jr., whose dad had been a basketball coach at Mississippi State.

But MTSU wasn't the answer, either.

By the time Loe reported for the fall semester in August 2004, he was engaged to Betsy. He missed his family even more. There was also the fact that Walker, the Middle Tennessee coach who recruited him, had left to become athletic director and basketball coach at Crichton.

So after non-conference play -- and especially after running into Walker's wife at Oak Court Mall during a trip home for a few days before Christmas -- Loe broke the news to Davis he was leaving Middle.

"Right after Jonathan left, I lost one of my guards for the season and his playing time would have increased," Davis said. "I thought he'd have a chance to start for us as a senior. But I can understand someone missing his family. He's a good guy from a good family."

Smith, who's now an assistant at Lipscomb University in Nashville, felt Loe wouldn't last long at Middle, especially after getting engaged to Betsy. He was right.

"To play at Division 1, basketball has to be the top priority in your life," Loe said. "But when I was at Middle, if I had a good or bad day at practice, it wouldn't bother me. I'd be thinking about Betsy, thinking about my sister and her new kid, thinking about getting a car and getting insurance.

"You lose a game in Division 1, you come back to your apartment and everybody is mad, except for me. I just didn't care about it that much. I finally figured out that I was probably good enough to play Division 1, but I wasn't going to be the Division 1 guy who would voluntarily work out on Christmas morning."

Basketball nirvana

Nobody knows Loe better than Betsy, who he married Aug. 13. She met him when he came to Bartlett High as a senior, captivated by his calm personality and charmed by his tender heart and love of family.

"Jonathan's a goofy guy who enjoys himself, someone who's not scared to say or do anything, someone who has grown comfortable knowing what he wants," said Betsy, who can't help but smile when she talks about her husband.

"The key thing for Jonathan is getting to other stuff other than basketball, like having me watch him skateboard, or him having time to play guitar. If he's happy in other parts of his life, it helps him do better on the court. It was just a matter of finding the coach and the team that let him be himself."

He has found it with Crichton and Walker, who besides being a former college assistant has also coached in the pro minor leagues including the Memphis HotShots of the United States Basketball League back in the mid '90s.

"I like to win and we play to win, but I believe basketball should be fun to play and coach," Walker said. "If you create that type of atmosphere, guys play harder. The fact that we run and press fits Jonathan's strengths.

"And we make sure we have time for a social life at Crichton, even though Jonathan's skateboarding in the school parking lot is giving me gray hair."

Loe is like many of his Crichton teammates. They don't care if they don't play in the bright lights of Division 1, or if there are 10,000 fans in the stands, or if ESPN's Dick Vitale is courtside screaming "Get a T.O., baby!"

The guys at Crichton play because it is on their terms in a style they prefer. They realize that if you play the way you want and how you want, it doesn't matter what level of basketball on which you compete.

"There's something very pure about this; it's like playing church league," Loe said. "It's nice to walk in an arena, see Betsy and my parents and be able to wave to them.

"It's nice to be on a team where you can laugh, even before a game, and then have everyone play harder than any team I've ever been on. I'm playing harder than I ever have -- I feel a lot better after games now if I have some bruises on me."

So is Loe's search for hoops happiness finally over?

"I don't think anybody ever plans on being at four different colleges," he said wistfully. "Nothing worked out like I had planned. But at the end of the day, I'm back home with my family. Betsy can finally be my No. 1 priority.

"And I'm lovin' playin' basketball again."

-- Ron Higgins: 529-2525