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There's no secret why Dawn Staley has two former Tennessee Lady Vols as assistants on her staff. So says South Carolina's new women's basketball coach.

"They're the No. 1 team in the conference," Staley said, "so I'm going to see if I can get some secrets of their (UT's) success."

Tennessee alums Carla McGhee and Nikki McCray were teammates with Staley on the 1996 gold medal U.S. Olympic team. McGhee was on Staley's coaching staff at Temple in 2003-04.

"We've been to war together,'' Staley said. "... It's going to be a war to compete and win the SEC championship and get into the NCAA tournament."

In McCray's case, her energy and ambition will be useful. She's joined Staley's staff after being an assistant at Western Kentucky.

"We had a conversation two years ago when she was just getting into coaching,'' Staley said. "I thought she needed a little more experience and she went and got some experience at Western Kentucky and she can recruit her butt off. She's in her player's years. I think she's got their attention. She'll probably help initially, as far as recruiting.

"She wants to be a head coach. I know I won't have her for long, but certainly I'm going to use her, the energy and hunger that she has."

After leaving Temple, McGhee was an assistant at Auburn for two seasons. She rejoined Staley after serving as a consultant for the WNBA expansion franchise in Atlanta.

"She was waiting for me to move from Temple,'' Staley said. "I don't know if she had some premonition I would leave. She likes the South. She doesn't like the East Coast. I think the moment I had the job, she called me and called me and called me."

UT coach Pat Summitt has taken notice of the coaching gathering.

"To have two former UT players join her staff is a real compliment to our program and to those two for establishing themselves,'' Summitt said.

Training Room Update: Lady Vols forward Vicki Baugh is rehabilitating with due caution from anterior cruciate knee ligament surgery last month.

Along with the ligament tear, Baugh suffered a bone bruise when she went down in the national championship game.

"A bone bruise changes the rehab some,'' said Jenny Moshak, the Lady Vols assistant athletic director for sports medicine. "We get pretty conservative when we see that bone bruise."

Regarding two other players who missed last season because of knee surgeries, Moshak said guard Cait McMahan is fully involved in offseason conditioning and center Kelley Cain will join her next month.

Auguste Update: Former Lady Vol Alberta Auguste, who needs to complete 15 hours to graduate, is enrolled in both sessions of summer school.

She will finish in the fall and graduate in December, said Kerry Howland, assistant director of the Thornton Center.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.