UCLA hires club team coach as assistant on basketball Coach Ben Howland’s staff

UCLA has hired Korey McCray, the coach of an Atlanta-based club team that has featured a couple of blue-chip prospects on its roster, as an assistant basketball coach, the school announced Tuesday.

McCray, 32, runs the Atlanta Celtics, and two of his former players — Jordan Adams and William “Shaq” Goodwin — are high school juniors who have listed UCLA among the schools they are considering.

UCLA Coach Ben Howland said in a statement that McCray would be “a great asset in the development and mentoring of our players, in on-the-floor coaching and in recruiting.” McCray replaces Scott Duncan, who left the Bruins in April to become associate head coach at Wyoming.

Having McCray on staff certainly won’t hurt UCLA’s chances of landing Adams, a 6-foot-4 forward, and Goodwin, a 6-7 power forward, said Bob Gibbons, a North Carolina-based recruiting expert. Goodwin now plays for the Youth of Memphis Competitors Assn. 17-and-under team.

“There’s no guarantee he’s going to be able to recruit the players. But he knows the family and will have, from a familiarity standpoint and personal-contact standpoint, [a relationship] that should be very advantageous for him and for UCLA,” Gibbons said.

McCray’s Atlanta Celtics rosters have included such NBA stalwarts as Dwight Howard, Amare Stoudemire, Joe Johnson and Josh Smith.

Gibbons said he expected more major college programs to hire club coaches because of the way “they’ve sort of supplanted the high school coach as the primary center of influence with top prospects.”

Sometimes those prospects follow a coach — Arizona landed Lamont Jones and Kevin Parrom after bringing in former New York Gauchos coach Emmanuel “Book” Richardson as an assistant — and sometimes they don’t. Baylor hired John Wall’s club coach when it was recruiting the top-rated point guard, but Wall chose Kentucky.

Howland noted that former Bruins assistant Ernie Zeigler, now head coach at Central Michigan, was once an Amateur Athletic Union coach. Howland said he would have no reservations about hiring a club coach “if the person has a background in college basketball and is qualified.”

McCray was a point guard at Mercer who became a graduate assistant at Florida State before returning to his alma mater to work as an assistant under Mark Slonaker. He also runs a basketball training camp called Fundamentals, whose clients have included Howard.

“I’m extremely excited to be at UCLA,” McCray said in a statement. “It is an amazing university and has a great history in basketball, academics and throughout the entire athletic program. I couldn’t be at a better place.” He did not return a call seeking further comment.

ben.bolch@latimes.com