Former Lady Vol basketball player Jannah Tucker overcame a nightmare and kept playing

Mike Jenson
Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News

As Jannah Tucker describes the ticking clock on her college basketball career, and her role on Villanova’s NCAA tournament-bound team, and her transfer from the University of Tennessee — and the reason for her delayed start at Tennessee — and the attempts now to extend her college career by one semester, her words veer away from knee surgeries and her play on the court.

Tennessee guard Jannah Tucker smiles in the locker room before practice at Spokane Arena in Spokane, Wash., Sunday, March 29, 2015.

“I got the protective order the day after I escaped,” Tucker said in a recent interview in Villanova’s basketball office.

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Tucker talked of once having “a whole plan” for her hoops career. She was Tennessee’s first recruit in the post-Pat Summitt era, one of the top dozen high school players nationally in her class coming out of Baltimore, a 30-points-a-game scorer as a high school junior.

Two knee surgeries changed her physical abilities, but her story isn’t about damaged ligaments. Tucker recites a psychological torture straight out of a movie — not just a teenage relationship filled with domestic violence but an actual hostage situation spanning weeks. She was the hostage.

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