UGA's eclectic basketball staff has its hands full

• Philip Pearson spent 16 of the past 20 years as a player or coach at Alabama, including the final 13 games of last season as interim head coach.

• And Stacey Palmore made ends meet a decade ago by doubling as a $10,000-a-year dorm director while making $2,500 as an assistant coach at Erskine College in Due West, S.C.

Johnson, 37, is the only one with previous ties to Fox, having worked for him the past three years at Nevada. Pearson, 38, brings extensive SEC experience, and Palmore, 40, also brings major-conference experience from his most recent job at Virginia Tech in the ACC. Pearson and Palmore have strong recruiting contacts in the Southeast, including the talent-rich Atlanta area.

Johnson was hired within minutes, and Pearson within days, of Fox taking the job early last month. Palmore started work on Monday.

Johnson also has ties to a former Georgia coach, having played for Tubby Smith at Tulsa. "I joke with Kwanza," Fox said, "that he's gotten two people the Georgia job — Tubby by playing for him and me by being my assistant."

By the time he finished law school, Johnson knew he wanted to coach. He never took the bar exam, but has found parts of his legal education useful in coaching.

"In law school, you learn to be very detailed and very organized and how to utilize your time," Johnson said. "I think, from that standpoint, it has helped me a lot."

Pearson says his time as Alabama's interim coach helped him grow professionally, although it inevitably ended in him looking for a new job. Just as Fox would hire all new assistants at Georgia, new head coach Anthony Grant did the same at Alabama. So Pearson changed shirts.

"It has been interesting to get out amongst the state of Georgia with a 'G' on my shirt instead of an 'A,'" Pearson said. "Everybody was usually pretty friendly with an 'A,' but they've been better with a 'G'."

Palmore said he was happily employed at Virginia Tech when he got a call on May 3 from Fox, whom he had never met. Eight days later, Palmore started work at UGA, attracted partly by the chance to live closer to Greenwood, S.C., where he grew up and his mother still lives.

Palmore thinks his experience recruiting Atlanta, dating to a job at Western Carolina, appealed to Fox.

"The Atlanta area is very important," Palmore said. "People have to realize there are going to be kids who go to other schools, but you've got to be able to get the best ones and the right ones to fit the University of Georgia and keep those two or three here in state."

The three assistants know they've stepped into tough jobs, helping to rebuild Georgia's program.

"It's a major challenge," Palmore said, "but I think all of us are up for the challenge."