The hidden faces of MSU guard Jazzmun Holmes
KANSAS CITY — Have you ever watched Jazzmun Holmes answer a question? She’s not going to play your games or make it easy.
This was two years ago and it was her first-ever game, and Holmes had scored 12 points off the bench. Of course, reporters were going to ask her some questions, like about making some adjustments in the second half.
She just laughs to herself quietly and looks at the reporter. She doesn’t answer. Nothing.
So her coach, Vic Schaefer, starts talking for her. He says he got on her and then she needed to settle down before taking over.
“They asked you a question, not me,” he jokingly says to her while patting her on the back. “It’s okay.” Still no answer. Crickets. So the reporter asks another question: Did she feel more comfortable as the game went on? “Yes.” Everyone smiles. The press conference moves on. Schaefer winks to somebody in the crowd. Holmes? She starts laughing to herself, in that inward way of somebody bracing tightly to hold it in and failing, tucking her head into her chest to hide how hard she’s laughing.
In a lineup full of beloved stars on top-seeded Mississippi State, which plays in the Sweet 16 Friday against North Carolina State, Holmes is the one people seem to know the least, even though her role has increased to the point where she’s the top bench player and regularly finishes games. She doesn’t talk too much. She keeps to herself. While MSU watched the Oklahoma State-Syracuse game on Saturday, she sat a few seats from everyone, leaning away and wearing some large over-ear headphones.
“It’s kind of difficult for me to come out of my shell and talk in front of everybody,” Holmes said.
Have you ever watched Holmes play defense? Each part of her body below her neck is moving so quickly and aggressively. Her feet are sliding and shifting to mirror each opposing movement. Her arms are frantically waving within inches of the ball-handler’s body, leaving no room to beat her. Her body seems to be working so hard.
Her face, though. It looks so casual. Her eyes look on with the calmness of somebody without a fear. Her neck doesn’t move anywhere it doesn’t need to. She’s slowly chomping away on gum.
If you removed her head from the rapidly-moving body, you would think she’s watching TV or waiting at the bus stop. Yet she’s dominating the ball-handler.
She takes pride in that defense, running the floor and finding teammates for the open shot. Her mother, Shayla Holmes-Nelson, said even in high school at Harrison Central when Holmes had the green light to score at will, she was opting to get a teammate involved instead (Holmes scored 15.6 points a game as a senior, but also had 7.3 assists). She started playing at 5 years old, going up against kids two years older.
There are also games like Monday in the second round against Oklahoma State when she only played one minute, and even that was a struggle. She didn’t seem to be taking it any differently than one of her best games. She seemed fine. What is going on in her head?
“You really have to start prying information from her,” Holmes-Nelson said. “Then she’ll start talking.”
Have you ever seen Holmes laugh? Like really laugh? Like mouth wide open, head thrown back and then down to her knees, cackling as her body turns and coils.
She likes pranking people. She’s best friends and roommates with Teaira McCowan, and sometimes McCowan doesn’t turn the lights on when she’s walking down the stairs. There was one time McCowan was walking down the steps while looking at her phone.
Holmes was hiding in the dark against the wall. She jumped out and forced a petrified McCowan to fall down the stairs.
“Jazz is not quiet at all,” McCowan said. “She plays entirely like too much. She plays all day.”
She laughs at the corniest of jokes, Holmes-Nelson said, and people probably don’t know how much she likes to dance.
Holmes can be picky about who she connects with or opens up to. She’s goofy and fun when she gets to that point with somebody, but it isn’t immediate. She and McCowan, both somewhat quiet “people watchers” as McCowan put it, took time as freshman roommates to open up to each other. Holmes got lonely this year, so she bought a pitbull named Jaxx. Most of her free time is spent with him. Her little child, she calls him. Her mother thinks Holmes just never wants to appear better than anybody. She didn’t grow up with a lot. Her biological father was in and out of her life, which is why she took her mother’s maiden name. She doesn’t want to be like or be around people who act better than anybody.
“I guess she migrates to people who’ve had some of the same struggles she’s had,” Holmes-Nelson said.
Have you ever seen Holmes hold a baby? She didn’t even know this baby. But she saw a baby in the crowd as Mississippi State was mingling with fans after beating Oklahoma State and her face lit up. She was going to hold this child.
She immediately stretched her arms out with her mouth agape. She held this apparent stranger’s child and cradled him and seemed so at home. Ten minutes later she didn’t even remember.
“There ain’t no telling. I love all the kids,” Holmes said. “All the kids come up to me after the game, so I don’t know whose kid it was.”
Holmes-Nelson said Holmes might go into pediatric nursing or daycare or anything with kids whenever her basketball career comes to a close. Kids are her passion, starting when her little brother was born. She saw all the changes he went through and wanted to be a part of that with other children.
When assistant coach Dionnah Jackson-Durrett gave birth to her daughter, Laila, two weeks ago, she posted a picture of Jazzmun (“The baby whisperer,” Jackson-Durrett called her) holding Laila.
“She already telling her that we don’t cry,” Jackson-Durrett tweeted. Have you ever seen Holmes cry? People close to her say not much actually bothers her. She doesn’t complain about playing time or anything with basketball. She doesn’t ask for much besides the typical college student asking their parent for some more money.
But her mother said she’s the kind of person to watch an animal abuse infomercial and break down into tears.
It can be easy to see the public displays of people and take that as the whole. It’s easy to forget somebody isn’t often their truest self with 10 reporters and five cameras in front of them, or a dozen teammates or 10,000 people in an arena, for that matter. It can be easy to think we know somebody even if all we really know is that one part of them.
Holmes can seem distant or hardened if you just watch her play basketball or do an interview. You might watch her warm up for a game and not take shots with her teammates those first few minutes because she’s busy in the corner working on ball-handling and take that as something it’s not.
Then you realized that hardened face is holding in a laugh or a tear and get just a little closer to the truth.
“Nah, she’s soft as I don’t know what,” Holmes-Nelson said. “She tries to act hard on the outside, but she’s definitely a softie.”