Jawaan Holmes - General Manager/Assistant Coach - Staff Directory

Staff Directory

Jawaan Holmes

Title:
General Manager/Assistant Coach
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Jawaan Holmes is in his second season as an assistant coach at the University of Tennessee at Martin and his first year in the general manager role in 2025-26.

Last season, UT Martin featured 16 newcomers, which were tied with California, IU Indy and Louisville for the most in NCAA Division I men’s basketball in 2024-25. The Skyhawks also touted the most international players (12) in the NCAA Division I ranks, which led to national attention when NCAA.com profiled UT Martin in a feature story as part of World Basketball Day on Dec. 21.

Navigating the entire season without a single minute of playing time from a returner, the Skyhawks won their first-round matchup in the Ohio Valley Conference Championship tournament, posting 14 victories against a brutal schedule that included five postseason participants (three of which took part in the NCAA Tournament) and nine games against eventual 20-win teams. UT Martin went 3-1 against the OVC regular season champion (1-1 against Southeast Missouri) and tournament champion (2-0 against SIUE) while also defeating CollegeBasketballInsider.com champion Illinois State. In addition to NCAA Tournament participant SIUE, the Skyhawks also recorded sweeps over OVC rivals Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois and Southern Indiana.

UT Martin wound up ranking in the top-20 in NCAA Division I men's basketball in offensive rebounding per game (13.73, 12^th), bench points per game (29.73, 17^th), rebounds per game (39.42, 19^th) and three-point field goal attempts per game (28.8, 20^th) in 2024-25. The Skyhawks also topped the OVC in three-point field goals made (9.1 per contest) and offensive rebounding (13.1 per outing) in league play.

Holmes joined UT Martin from Florida Tech, a NCAA Division II program in Melbourne, Fla. He wrapped up his fourth season as an assistant coach with the Panthers under the program’s all-time wins leader Billy Mims in 2023-24. Florida Tech became nationally ranked and finished .500 or better in each of Holmes’ four years on staff – including a combined 35-23 record over the past two seasons where the Panthers boasted the top defense in the Sunshine State Conference in back-to-back campaigns. That included a 19-11 record in 2022-23 as the 19 victories were the most for the program since 2011-12.

Hailing from Shepherdstown, W.Va., Holmes began his coaching career with the semi-pro Winchester Storm out of the American Professional Basketball League. He was an assistant coach at Jefferson High School (his alma mater) before serving as head coach at Cocoa Beach High School in Florida, delivering 10 wins in his rookie campaign after the program had combined to win just eight games in the previous three seasons. For his efforts, he finished second in the Space Coast Conference Coach of the Year voting. He followed that with a playoff victory in his second and final year at with the Minutemen program in 2019-20.

Coming out of high school, Holmes ultimately spurned several basketball scholarship offers to play baseball at Fairmont State in West Virginia – where he garnered All-West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference honors and All-Conference Academic accolades. He eventually went on to play professional basketball with the Georgia Prowl of the American Basketball Association.

Holmes graduated cum laude with a degree in business administration and management from Fairmont State in 2008.