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A dribble down memory lane for Carla McGhee and Nikki McCray
Assistants McGhee, McCray hope return to alma mater isn’t rocky for USC
*FILE* Nikki McCray will be returning with Dawn Staley to face Tennessee.
RICHARD DREW /AP
CommentsPat Summitt’s broad, far-reaching coaching tree includes a Palmetto branch.
When Dawn Staley visits Thompson-Boling Arena today for the first time as South Carolina’s coach, she will be flanked by a pair of assistant coaches who are as much a part of the Tennessee tradition as Rocky Top and orange uniforms.
Carla McGhee and Nikki McCray are members of Tennessee’s Hall of Fame who missed each other in Knoxville by a year. Both were teammates with Staley on the U.S. squad during the 1996 Olympics and have reunited a dozen years later in Columbia, where they hope to put a dent in the Lady Vols’ SEC supremacy.
To do so, they will have to get past their former coach and mentor, who happens to be the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history. The 56-year-old Summit, in her 35th season at UT, enters today’s game four victories shy of 1,000 for her career.
“She’s my hero with the game. That’s somebody that I idolize. She’s just great in every facet,” McGhee said. “I couldn’t think of a better role model. ... I said, ‘Pat, if I can touch a third of the people you’ve touched, I’ll be pretty doggone successful.’”
Seeing familiar faces on the opposite bench is nothing new for Summitt, who has 45 former players coaching at all levels this season.
“That’s something I’m really proud of — the number of players that decided to leave Tennessee and go into the coaching ranks,” Summitt said. “I know Dawn, when she brought the two of them in, she was excited. And obviously I was excited for both Carla and Nikki.
“You always have a feeling of pride, and they’re always family. Once a Lady Vol, always a Lady Vol.”
McGhee, who played at Tennessee from 1986-90, said “her blood is always going to bleed orange,” adding she is proud to have played in a program that “sets the bar” in women’s basketball.
McGhee was on two of Summitt’s eight national championship teams — in 1987 and ‘89. McGhee’s second ring came after she missed the ‘87-’88 season following a car crash in which she nearly died.
McGhee recovered to play her final two seasons for the Lady Vols, and went on to play 13 years professionally and win a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics. The 1996 team featured a pair of fresh-face rookies in McCray and Connecticut’s Rebecca Lobo, who faced each other in the 1995 NCAA championship game won by the Huskies.
The dynamic between McGhee, 40, and the 37-year-old McCray remains largely the same.
McCray was an All-American and two-time SEC player of the year at Tennessee, where she helped the Lady Vols post a 122-11 record in her four seasons. But she never won a national championship — the standard in Knoxville.
“I’ll go back and I’ll walk by that wall and I won’t be on that little picture (showing) everybody that has won a national championship. And it’s like, ‘Dang,’” McCray said. “And you feel like you didn’t accomplish what you needed to. But I did a lot of other things.”
McCray won two Olympic golds and was a three-time WNBA All-Star before entering the coaching ranks at Western Kentucky in 2006. The Tennessee native has aspirations to be a head coach someday.
McGhee is content with being an assistant, secure in the knowledge she is making more of an impact than she did in front office jobs with General Motors and the WNBA.
“I had the corporate job when I worked for the WNBA on Fifth Avenue. I wore the suit, and toted the briefcase,” she said. “Nothing empowered me more than being on this hardwood floor.”
While McCray said it would be weird coaching against her former coach, Summitt believes the ex-Lady Vols have aligned themselves with a winner in Staley.
“I thought it was great to have Dawn in our league. It always makes us better when we have coaches that come in, and we know they’re going to get the job done,” Summitt said. “It takes time. But there’s no doubt in my mind it’s going to happen, and probably in a timely fashion.”
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
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