Staff Directory

Drew Kelly

Title:
Associate Head Coach
Email:

Drew Kelly joined the University of Tennessee at Martin men's basketball coaching staff in April 2025 and was promoted to associate head coach in May 2026.

Kelly's first season on the Skyhawk sidelines was one of the best in program history. UT Martin notched 22 victories – tying the 2016-17 and 2008-09 squads for the most in school history – and reached 20 wins faster than any other team in the program’s NCAA Division I Era (since 1992). The Skyhawks ranked in the top-10 in NCAA Division I men’s basketball in scoring defense (63.2 points per game, third), three-point percentage defense (.292, fourth), field goal percentage defense (.390, sixth) and offensive rebounds per game (13.88, eighth). UT Martin also ranked in the top-25 nationally in steals per game (8.8, 21^st), rebounds per game (39.91, 22^nd) and rebound margin (+6.5, 24^th) while topping the Ohio Valley Conference with 8.03 three-point field goals made per contest.

The Skyhawks' .727 winning percentage against nonconference opponents was the program’s highest (minimum three games played) heading into OVC play and UT Martin followed that with 13 league wins – just one shy of the program record – en route to an OVC Championship semifinals appearance. The Skyhawks' 143 blocked shots last season were the most in school history while its 1,317 rebounds were just two away from the program’s all-time record.

UT Martin also produced a pair of All-OVC performers in 2025-26 in Andrija Bukumirovic and Matas Deniusas. Bukumirovic became just the 13th player in school history to be crowned All-OVC first team and was the only wing/frontcourt honoree on the 2026 list. Meanwhile, Deniusas was the first Skyhawk to win OVC Freshman of the Year, All-OVC second team and OVC All-Newcomer accolades in the same season.

Kelly owns 29 years of collegiate coaching experience, spending three seasons (2022-25) at Northern Illinois after serving as both the head coach and athletic director at Harcum College from 2005-22. He also served as head coach at Bucks County Community College (2002-04) as well as stints as an assistant coach at The College of New Jersey (2000-02) and Haverford College (1997-2000).

Kelly got his first full-time NCAA Division I experience at Northern Illinois, overseeing four All-MAC postseason honorees (including just the program's fourth player to score 1,000 career points in just two seasons) and four Academic All-MAC recipients in his tenure in Dekalb.

In Kelly's first season with the Huskies, the team reeled off their longest road winning streak in 20 years (all in conference play) while also tacking on impressive victories against MAC champion and 28-win Kent State (snapping the nation's third-longest winning streak in the process) and an eventual 23-win Indiana State squad out of the Missouri Valley Conference. Northern Illinois showed a four-game improvement in the MAC standings and finished in the top-three in league play in field goal percentage (.480), three-point field goal percentage (.368), field goal percentage defense (.445), three-point field goal percentage defense (.325) and assists (13.8 per outing).

The Huskies boasted their best start to a season since 2015-16 after beginning the 2023-24 campaign with a 5-1 record, knocking off Sun Belt Conference regular season champion Appalachian State and DePaul for the first time since 2005. Northern Illinois knocked down 227 three-pointers that season, which ranked fourth in the program's single-season record book. Two Huskies were named Academic All-MAC, marking the first time that the program received multiple winners of that award since the 1999-2000 campaign.

Kelly built the Harcum basketball program from scratch, accounting for a 429-102 record (.808 winning percentage) since the program's inception in 2005 until 2022. He won at least 20 games in 16 of his 17 seasons with the lone exception being a 17-1 record during the 2020-21 COVID-19 shortened season. His 2021-22 team went 32-3 and took part in the NJCAA Elite Eight, tying the school record for victories with his 2013-14 squad that also won 32 games and advanced to the NJCAA Final Four. He also led the school to the NJCAA Tournament during the 2015-16 season and reached No. 1 in the NJCAA Division I poll for the first time in program history in 2009-10, winning 25 straight decisions to become the first Region XIX program to top the poll since 1974.

Overall, Harcum had a pair of top-five national finishes and five top-10 national finishes after transforming the Bears from almost 90 years as an all-female private junior college with no athletic department to a NJCAA Division I powerhouse. Individually, Kelly sent 46 student-athletes to the NCAA Division I level during his time in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Kelly went 22-19 in his head coaching career at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pa., making it to the Eastern Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference semifinals in his first season as a head coach. He worked as an assistant under John Castaldo at The College of New Jersey before assisting Michael Mucci at Haverford in Pennsylvania.

A Liberty Corner, NJ native, Kelly was a student assistant under head coach Steve Lappas for four seasons at Villanova before graduating with a degree in geography in 1997. Kelly also earned a Master's degree in counseling from the College of New Jersey in 2002. His son Sean is a student assistant on the Skyhawk coaching staff.