After five years on Wes Moore’s staff, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga assistant women’s basketball coach Nikki Blassingame has been promoted to associate head coach, Moore announced Friday.

Blassingame joined Moore’s staff in 2004 and has been an integral part in continuing the Lady Mocs’ run of 10 consecutive Southern Conference regular-season championships, Moore said.

“Nikki’s meant a lot to our program, she means a lot to our players and she has a lot of day-to-day responsibilities,” Moore said. “I feel like we’re very fortunate to have her here, and I want to make it a bit more public how important she is to our success.”

Blassingame, a former All-ACC forward at Clemson, said she was surprised and humbled by the promotion.

“Immediately, I told him it wasn’t necessary,” she said. “Honestly, that’s what I told him. And he said that that’s what he wanted to do. It was very nice of him and I’m very humbled by it.”

The promotion involves a new title but no pay raise.

Moore met Blassingame in the mid-1990s, when he was an assistant at North Carolina State and she was a high school standout in Seneca, S.C. Moore couldn’t get her to sign with the Wolfpack, but he brought her in as an assistant after she spent three years on the staff at the USC-Spartanburg (now USC Upstate).

In her time at UTC, Blassingame has been heavily involved in recruiting and in working with the Lady Mocs’ forwards, including two-time SoCon player of the year Alex Anderson and Shanara Hollinquest, last season’s player of the year.

“It’s definitely a blessing. Those young ladies have worked extremely hard; not just (Anderson and Hollinquest), but all the post players and the guards have worked extremely hard and had success,” Blassingame said. “It makes me look like I’ve done something, but I’ve just given them the ball and they’ve gone to work.”

The naming of associate or assistant head coaches is a growing trend in college athletics and often signals that a successor is in place for the longtime head coach. However, Moore said he has no plans to leave UTC any time soon.

“I don’t plan on going away anywhere,” Moore said with a laugh. “Hopefully she will keep this title for at least 10 or 12 years. I plan on sticking around a while.”