Jeremy Shulman was “about in the third grade,” as his uncle John Shulman says, when he started an AAU program as a sophomore high school that he felt could compete with just about anyone in Tennessee.
The then-16 year old Jeremy looked younger than many of the 13-year olds he coached on his first team–the Midstate Hoyas–and barely had a driver's license, but he was going for it. The now-UT Martin head coach says he focused on playing basketball in his junior year of high school, but that he knew his mold as an undersized two guard didn’t lend itself to big-time basketball. As a senior, he decided to go all in on coaching.
That’s when the Mid State Ballerz–with a Z, as his uncle specifies–were born.
The program’s director was 17 years old when he started it, but he believed in what he was building enough to make his college decision with the program in mind. Jeremy decided on Middle Tennessee State University and ran the program through all four years of his college tenure.
At that time there were only two important AAU programs in Tennessee–as John Shulman, the Central Arkansas head coach, says–but here came little Jeremy Shulman. Perhaps it was driven by naivety, perhaps it was just unbreakable confidence that led him, but Jeremy wasn’t afraid of anything.
The program won 415 games over Jeremy’s 10 seasons at the helm while winning three state championships and charting three national top-12 finishes, including a fourth-place performance in 2005. During Jeremy’s tenure with Midstate Ballerz, 126 players went on to earn scholarships at the collegiate level, including 60 at the Division-I level. It also had a McDonald’s All American and NBA Draft pick under Jeremy’s watch.
Perhaps it was a precursor to what Jeremy is doing these days as his UT Martin team sits near the top of the OVC in just his second year at the helm. Hindsight would’ve indicated that Jeremy was on to something as a result of his ambition–which is still easy to see in the unconventional recruiting strategy that he’s employed at UT Martin–but that type of result never appeared to be top of mind.
“Everybody was going ‘what is he doing?’” John told Basket Under Review, “And he stepped on toes, but he didn’t care. And I was like ‘ok, alright. There you go Jeremy.’”
John–who has been similarly successful in his second season at Central Arkansas and has the Bears in second place in the ASUN regular season race–didn’t like what his nephew did next, though.
The now-Central Arkansas head coach got here by stirring Kool Aid at summer camps and working tirelessly to get his foot in the door. He says that he felt his nephew was trying to shortcut the process of moving into college coaching by “riding one of his players to get a job in college.”
“It made me mad, just being honest,” John said, “I was like ‘I had to work my tail end off. You need to work your tail off.’ I said ‘Jeremy, I’m not gonna call you a coach.’ I remember my wife getting mad at me a little bit. I was like ‘I’m not going to call you a coach until you become a coach, and to become a coach you have to go through a season of ups and downs and recruiting and bus trips and dealing with all this other mess.’”
John swore that he wasn’t going to help his nephew in that stage of his career, and he didn’t. He wanted Jeremy to see this through and go through the necessary order of things. Turns out that John’s message hit home.
Jeremy spent two years as an assistant coach at East Mississippi Community College, which led his uncle to declare him a real coach. Once that became clear, John was willing to help his nephew and Jeremy eventually took on the head coaching job at Brevard Community College before it was renamed Eastern Florida State College. The now-UT Martin head coach spent 14 seasons in Melbourne, Florida, became the program’s all-time wins leader, won 11 conference championships and took the Titans to two Final Fours before getting his first Division-I opportunity at UT Martin in 2024.
As UT Martin rolls in its first 20-win season under Jeremy and John watches from his perch in Conway, Arkansas, he says he’s “so flippin' proud” of his nephew because of how he’s taken the long-hard way to get here, just like John did years ago.
“We’ve always had a good relationship, but I do think that he's wanted me to earn my position here in the college basketball world,” Jeremy told Basket Under Review. “My whole life, he's never really wanted to give me any free handouts and wanted me to earn it over the 29 years I've been coaching basketball. Getting that opportunity at the Division-I level last year, it's just done something different with our relationship.”
The stars have aligned for both Shulman’s programs at the same time this season. Jeremy’s Skyhawks are 20-9 with wins over UNLV and Bradley as well as 12 league wins after a 2024-25 season in which they won just 14 games total. John’s Central Arkansas team is 18-11 and had won 10 in a row before dropping a game to Florida Gulf Coast. Even with the loss, the Bears look to be a buzzsaw of sorts in the ASUN after they won just nine games and were happy to win the 9/10 game in the conference tournament a season ago.
Perhaps what makes the story so unique is that they’ve done it with nearly opposite philosophies, though. Jeremy says that he and his uncle are “very different.” Central Arkansas has gotten here as a result of heavy in-state recruiting and a up-tempo Princeton offense, while UT Martin has prided itself on international recruiting and has thrived as a result of having the OVC’s best defense as well as the No. 320 pace in the country.
That hasn’t stopped Jeremy from watching whatever Central Arkansas games he can in an effort to pick up concepts and things that he can learn from. It hasn’t stopped him from running things by his uncle, either.
"Obviously we’re family but he and I have really connected even more since I've been at a Division-I the last year and a half,” Jeremy said. “We’ve talked more probably in the last year and a half than we've ever talked in our entire life.”
When Jeremy approaches John about offense, though, John says he directs his nephew to his son Max Shulman—who is Central Arkansas’ offensive coordinator. John says it’s like “Christmas morning” for his son and nephew when they talk offense.
Where John feels he makes the biggest effort with his nephew is the moments in which Jeremy is coming off of a loss or a stretch of them. “When you lose, you lose a lot of so-called friends,” John says as he indicates that he’s reached out to a number of struggling coaches in recent weeks. That’s not Jeremy, though.
“He don’t need me. He is doing just fine on his own,” John said. “He’s got an amazing niche in recruiting. He knows how to win. He knows how to coach…hopefully I've helped him a little bit but, like I said, on the court, he don't need help, he don’t need help recruiting, he don't need help coaching. He's really good at what he does.”
Say what you will about the Shulman’s family reunions, but don’t say that when they happen they’re not the result of a painstaking process that requires a left-brained person to take control and run the show. John grew up alongside seven siblings. It’s rare that they all get together, but when they do it’s mostly at weddings–where there’s a sometimes a push from the non coaches in the family to avoid basketball talk.
John jokes that the family is “dysfunctional,” but says that he and his siblings have always had each other’s backs since they lost their parents 34 years ago. He says that when something like that happens, becoming closer is natural. Three of John’s siblings live in Nashville–including Jeremy’s dad, Bill, and John’s other brother Jim, who was the vice mayor of Nashville for five years–one lives in South Carolina, one lives in North Carolina and one is an actress in New York city. They don’t see each other every day, but he says that it’s apparent that they love each other.
When they do get together, he says, it’s a “battle to get a word in” and “it’s a competition to see who can get on the stage and who everybody will listen to.”
“Shulmans as a whole are very simple; quirky,” John said, “We’re very quirky.”
“The Shulmans are all a little different, “Jeremy said. “We're a little bit weird, but we're a little awesome at the same time.”
John says that the family has “a little bit of everything in it,” but appears to have a general sense of pride in regard to how he and his siblings interact. The Central Arkansas head coach is the connector of sorts within the family, although he–and everyone in his family–would say that his wife Amy is the key to it all. Amy is touted by John as the best shooter in their five-person family–which says something considering Max’s illustrious career at Alabama-Huntsville, the fact that John’s son Tanner was a Division-I player at Lipscomb and John’s youngest son J.C.’s role as a walk-on at Central Arkansas.
The three members of John’s family that are part of the Central Arkansas program and Jeremy have their informal family reunion each preseason in a secret scrimmage between their two programs. Each staff appeared to conclude that it was going to be a more prosperous season for the other in the aftermath of this season’s matchup.
John calls young coaches like his sons “half crazy” and says that he looks at them and says “what are y’all doing” because of the profession that they’re entering. As he often does after a joke, though, John snaps back into it and says that he’s proud of Max for his role on the Central Arkansas staff and Tanner for what he’s a part of as a James Madison graduate assistant. Perhaps that embodies how this family operates best.
The Shulmans never appear to take themselves too seriously, but they are all in on what they do and their purpose. Perhaps John is right about what exactly it takes to be a young coach, but even after seeing the ups and downs that came with their dad’s profession, Tanner and Max chose it. As a kid, Tanner was a ballboy for John at Chattanooga when Steph Curry made “an 85 footer” against John’s team. Max saw the difficulty that came with his dad being fired at Chattanooga. They all feel as if they’re where they’re supposed to be in this, though–even if it requires them to be a little bit “wacky” to have success.
“The Shulman family prides itself on loving people,” Max told Basket Under Review. “This business is all about people anyways. Winning games is very important. But, if you don't have fun doing it, you can't make relationships with the kids doing it, then what's the point? That’s the big thing, is just trying to help people.”
Perhaps they don’t operate like everyone else, but the Shulmans are a relationship family. That’s why they’ve missed Tanner “badly” as he’s migrated up north to pursue a step forward in the profession. That’s why John believes he’s in the best industry in the world.
John’s skillset as a relationship builder and leader hasn’t gone out of style within the family, though. It never will.
“Our family as a whole, we’re super tight knit,” Tanner told Basket Under Review. “Clearly I’m the only one away right now and it’s kind of always been like that, but whenever we’re all together we’re always talking ball and my mom is trying not to get us to throw something around the house.”
As John braces to hang up the phone on a near-30 minute interview, he makes sure to deliver one final message in regard to his situation. The Central Arkansas head coach wants the talk to be about Jeremy, Max and Tanner. He doesn’t want this to be about him.
Telling the story of this college basketball family business is impossible without John, though. Without John, his two sons may have never discovered this as a potential career path for them. John is the pioneer of sorts within this basketball family.
“He loved college basketball and that’s what he was going to do no matter what,” Tanner said. “I think he's just made a great path for all of us, just being honest.”
The now-Central Arkansas coach knew this was the profession for him when he went to a Kentucky vs. Tennessee game in the third grade–which he describes as “extasy” for his brain. John says that from that point on he always had the dream of coaching basketball in mind and that he didn’t ever deviate from it.
John says he was a good basketball player in high school and wanted to play college basketball, but “college basketball didn’t want me.” His only chance at being a Division-I athlete was as a tennis player, which he jumped at the opportunity to be. After a year, though, the Central Arkansas coach wondered what he was doing as only a tennis player. He wanted to coach basketball.
So, he did.
While playing tennis at East Tennessee State University, John was the junior varsity boys basketball coach at University High. He had “no time whatsoever,” but that he loved the situation for the four years he was in it. Make no mistake, the Central Arkansas head coach didn’t get here–or his previous Division-I stop, Chattanooga, via silver spoon. His son Tanner says that it was the result of his dad “grinding and grinding, and grinding.” John contextualizes his basketball journey best by recalling making soft drinks for campers at summer camps while attempting to rise in the profession.
John says this journey he’s on–which has included stops at Chattanooga, McCallie School, a high school in Chattanooga, as well as Alabama-Huntsville–is about the feeling of being in a winning locker room after a difficult stretch. He says the journey also relates to the relationships that he’s developed with his players over time. The most important relationship, though, is his’ and Amy Shulman’s. The Shulmans have been married for 29 years.
John wouldn’t describe himself as anything special. He says his nephew and sons are better than him at the new age of college basketball. As he reflects on how he got here, he recalls the doors that former ETSU assistant Alan LeForce opened for him years ago. John says the best way to describe him is as someone who loves life, loves what he does and doesn’t take himself seriously despite taking his profession seriously.
“I’m an East Tennessee redneck,” John said. “I know I have limited brain power, I have ADHD, I can't read a book or I’ll fall asleep. I drink diet Mountain Dew, or Diet Coke in the middle of the night to calm my nerves.”
There’s nobody quite like John Shulman in college basketball, and he appears to be secure in that reality. The Central Arkansas head coach knows the intensity required in this–and has reflected that by going out of his way to help other coaches–but he’s never held back from being self-deprecating and doesn’t appear to have heard many jokes that he doesn’t think are funny.
John doesn’t tell many, either.
“Funniest person alive,” Jeremy said. “I think my uncle is a carbon copy of the Jeremy Piven character, Ari Gold from Entourage.”
It was finally time for Jeremy Shulman to take the step. The now-UT Martin coach had been dating his wife for just under a year and had just arrived in Latvia to visit her family for the first time. The downtime wasn’t all that prevalent, but Jeremy got enough of it to notice that there was nowhere to watch the NBA or college basketball.
Instead, his only choice was the Euroleague. Perhaps that was fate. The now-UT Martin head coach says he fell in love with the Euroleague, the style of play, the coaching and the level of basketball IQ involved.
The experience sparked Shulman–who had already dipped his toes in the water with some international recruiting–to look “a little bit” more to international recruiting than he did previously. He says he was still hesitant to go all in with a nearly-all international team. Then, he saw a number of his teams at Eastern Florida State “fall short” of the culture that he hoped to build and the connectedness that he thought was necessary to win big. As Jeremy reflected, he realized that a number of his favorite players to coach were international players.
Shulman’s current UT Martin team would indicate that he has no hesitancy to go all in on the international pool anymore. The SkyHawks have 13 players that come from outside the United States and have nine different countries represented on their roster. UT Martin’s seven leading scorers are all international players.
“He’s just doing everything different,” Tanner said of Jeremy. “He’s just his own guy. He doesn’t care what anyone else says, what anyone else does. He’s gonna do what he wants to do. His energy is just phenomenal. All the guys, you can tell, just love him and what he does is just special.”
The UT Martin coach’s ability to maximize a relatively untapped recruiting bed has allowed his program to become a legitimate OVC contender in year two, just a season after its best accomplishment was winning one conference tournament game. The commitment to the off the beaten path vision is a microcosm of how Jeremy finally broke through as a Division-I head coach in the first place.
Jeremy has been a basketball visionary since he was running basketball leagues at recess as a second grader. The UT Martin coach’s immediate family doesn’t have any ties to the coaching business like his extended family does, but he fell in love with the profession and still acts as if he’s got a passion for it.
If the list of coaches that promote their programs on Twitter the way Jeremy does exists, it only has a few names on it. If there’s a more ambitious one, he’d be difficult to find. Few head coaches in the country are connectors in the same way that Jeremy is. In a different way than his uncle, Jeremy has thrived as a result of his ability to be himself and follow the philosophies he believes in unapologetically.
“The job Jeremy is doing over there should be noticed,” Florida State coach Luke Loucks said while joking that he can’t pronounce many of UT Martin’s players’ names. “Watching film on them, I was thoroughly impressed with the job he’s doing.”
As John notes, the family business wasn’t exactly booming this time a year ago–when Central Arkansas and UT Martin each finished below .500 in league play–but that’s not all that propels this forward.
John has long said that year ones are often chaotic and that things often go wrong in them–and they did for him, Jeremy and each of their staffs–but those times have passed. Now, that things are different the family still isn’t straying from the reasons as to why they do this.
“The journey is the relationships and the impact that you make along the way,” John said. “I'm going towards the end of my journey. The journey is being in a locker room after you've lost five in a row and winning that game and kids going and feeling good about themselves. Like, that's the journey.”
The journey these days entails a realistic chance at an NCAA Tournament berth for Central Arkansas, UT Martin and James Madison. The family has gotten here while deviating from some conventional norms, losing shooting contests to John’s wife Amy and following non-linear paths. Here it is all the same, though.
Who knows how this all ends. For now, though, the family business is booming.
