Add goofiness and loyalty to the Mississippi State women’s basketball team coaching staff’s recruiting check list.
Those items were the latest intangibles Jazz Holmes and Jazmine Spears credited to the Bulldogs and Vic Schaefer and his coaches following official visits to MSU. It didn’t take Holmes and Spears long after being in Starkville to make verbal commitments to play for Schaefer in 2015-16.
Holmes, a 5-8 guard from Harrison Central High School in Gulfport, made her verbal pledge Sept. 17, while Spears, a 6-foot sophomore forward from Trinity Valley (Texas) Community College, renewed her commitment to MSU following the Sept. 6 weekend when she attended the Alabama-Birmingham football game. Spears gave a verbal commitment to MSU following a standout prep career at New Albany High.
The players are the first commitments for MSU’s Class of 2016. The verbal pledges are non-binding. Players can sign National Letters of Intent in the early signing period in November.
“I liked the environment and the coaches and the teammates,” said Holmes, who averaged 18.4 points, 3.5 assists, 6.0 rebounds, and 3.4 steals per game last season. “I liked how they made me feel part of the team. We had a lot of laughs and there were a lot of similarities.”
Holmes, whose given name is Jazzmun, credited freshman Kayla Nevitt for making her laugh the most and helping her feel like she was part of the family. It also helped that Holmes was able to play a pickup game with her teammates. She said she played the point guard and was paired with freshman guard Blair Schaefer in a couple of victories.
Dan Olson, of Dan Olson’s Collegiate Girls Basketball Report and espnW’s HoopGurlz, doesn’t have Holmes ranked in his top 300 players in this year’s senior class. Still, the longtime recruiting analyst says Holmes is an “athletic lead guard who flourishes in up-tempo styles of play.” He said Holmes can penetrate, is “smooth off the bounce,” and can create with a solid crossover dribble. He also said she is a 3-point threat with good court awareness.
Holmes describes herself as a “fast” player who is a finisher and a good distributor with a good mid-range game.
Shayla Holmes-Nelson, Jazz’s mother who also coaches her with the Amateur Athletic Union Mississippi Ballers, said Jazz is a “game-changer” on both ends of the floor.
“She likes to get everybody involved on offense,” said Holmes-Nelson, who has coached Jazz every year in AAU since 2006, when she started with the Ballers. “She will get everybody involved because she likes to see everybody score. She likes to give assists. She likes to do everything.”
Holmes-Nelson said her daughter’s love for the game at an early age. She said Jazz started to play basketball in the city of Gulfport when she was 5 years old. Holmes-Nelson said league officials told her they needed coaches to volunteer for the league, which made it easier for her to coach her daughter against girls that were two years older than she was. Despite the age difference, Holmes-Nelson said Jazz enjoyed the amount of activity involved in basketball and picked up the skills quickly.
“She has been the point guard on every team she has played on,” Holmes-Nelson said. “She thinks she is a post player. She likes the fact that she can get down there and try different moves. She likes the fact that she can get down and bump with people and do a turnaround move and get around them. It is almost like a challenge for her to do that.”
Jazz understands she will face a similar challenge when she arrives at MSU. She said she wants to work on her communication skills so she will be a more vocal leader. She said she will continue to hone her skills as a passer and as a finisher so she can help Schaefer and his staff keep building the program into a national contender.
“When I went on the official visit I thought it was going to be something totally different,” Holmes said of her official visit. “I thought it was in the middle of nowhere and I thought I was going to be kind of bored, but they made me feel like part of the family.”
Spears averaged 11.9 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 1.2 assists per game last season to help coach Elena Lovato and the Trinity Valley C.C. women’s basketball team win the national title. Lovato is now an assistant coach at MSU. Gerald Ewing, Spears’ current coach at Trinity Valley, said Spears wanted to go back home and really didn’t look at other colleges. He said Spears’ loyalty is rare in a recruiting environment in which players often commit, change their minds, and commit to another school.
“Jazmine is an extremely loyal person. That is the reason she is going back to Mississippi State,” Ewing said. “She is a woman of her words. She showed a lot of character by not going in a different direction.”
Ewing believes Spears has grown up a lot and has a better understanding of what it will take her to succeed in the Southeastern Conference. He said she has a better appreciation of how hard she needs to work in practice to get ready for the games, especially at a school where every team is gunning for a marquee victory against the national champions. Ewing hopes Spears will continue to emerge and become the leader he believes she can be to direct the team on another national title run.
“Jazmine wants another ring,” Ewing said. “She already has told my kids every time play going to be an ‘X’ on our back to try to get them to understand at Trinity Valley everybody wants to beat us, so you have to come out every night with your ‘A’ game,” Ewing said. “I think Jazmine came in with that mind-set. I think Jazmine is a winner, and not all kids can say that. She is special. I had a little talk with her (about being a leader this season) because her teammates respect her. I have tried to get her to understand that everybody can lead but everybody is not a leader. She has been working extremely hard and pushing herself to get better.”
Spears agrees that she has matured in her time at Trinity Valley and has grown into a better person.
“I really don’t think I would have been Division I ready out of high school,” Spears said. “Coming to Trinity Valley taught me what to expect, it helped me a little bit with my grades, and it made me a better person to get to the big level.
“When I was in high school, I really didn’t work as hard as I needed to besides in the games. Coming to Trinity Valley I have learned I have to work hard in practice to play in the games.”
Spears said it was easy for her to re-commit to MSU after being placed at Trinity Valley because the players and coaches still made her feel like she was part of the Bulldog family. She said she was proud everyone didn’t “give up” on her, and that she is looking forward to making it back to Starkville to help the Bulldogs keep building.
“They encouraged me to work hard and get another ring (at Trinity Valley) and to come to Mississippi State and do good things,” Spears said. “(Coach Schaefer) explained to me he is trying to build a program with a lot of Mississippi kids. I know some of the players he has recruited. I have played with Victoria (Vivians). It was a good recruiting class that made me go there.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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