Celebration of life for Lady Vols star Nikki McCray-Penson to be held in Knoxville
A celebration of life for former Lady Vols basketball star Nikki McCray-Penson will be held in Knoxville on Saturday.
McCray-Penson, 51, died Thursday while battling cancer and pneumonia. A celebration of life has been scheduled for 2 p.m. at Mt. Olive Baptist Church with the visitation at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, McCray-Penson's family has requested donations to the Kay Yow Cancer Fund in her memory.
McCray-Penson first battled breast cancer in 2013 when she was an assistant coach at South Carolina. She coached for 16 seasons and spent the longest with the Gamecocks from 2008-17 on Dawn Staley's original staff. South Carolina won the program's first national championship in McCray-Penson's last season.
She went on to be the coach at Old Dominion and Mississippi State before spending last season as an assistant at Rutgers.
McCray-Penson's playing career earned her a spot in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. She was a two-time SEC Player of the Year at Tennessee in 1994 and 1995 after a decorated career at Collierville High School near Memphis.
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She led Tennessee to three SEC regular-season championships, two SEC Tournament titles and a 1995 Final Four appearance in her four-year career. McCray-Penson was a two-time All-American who was inducted into the National Federation of State High School Associations Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2022.
McCray-Penson spent nine seasons in the WNBA and was a three-time all-star who scored 2,550 career points. She averaged 14.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game playing for the Washington Mystics, Indiana Fever, Phoenix Mercury, San Antonio Stars and Chicago Sky. She also played two seasons in the ABL before the WNBA was formed, where she won league MVP and an ABL championship with the Columbus Quest.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Nikki McCray death: Lady Vols star's celebration of life service set
