"I ain't even going to lie. I never wanted to come to Morgan, just because of the history [of losing]," Holmes says. "I used to always see myself playing for a big school like Maryland, especially because I was from here. But when that didn't happen, my father just told me: 'Be the quiet, sleeping giant. Just come out and show everyone what you can do.' "
Holmes - an honor roll student majoring in business administration - grew up in Cherry Hill and was just 2 years old when his father, Mark Holmes, put a tiny Fisher-Price basketball in his hand. What happened next was not much of a surprise to either of his parents: The pint-sized player never wanted to put it down.
"I used to run into the room when he was sleeping and I'd wake him up," Holmes says of his father. "I'd yell, 'Daddy, Daddy, come watch me shoot!' "
Holmes' father and his mother - Tijuana Hall - still watch, though they've learned to do it from different parts of Morgan State's Hill Field House. Holmes says their cheering styles are simply too different to watch games together in harmony.
"If you hear a loud lady [behind the Morgan bench], that's my mother. If you see a man who is calm for a while, then he does this," Holmes says, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation, "that's my father. They sit on the opposite sides of the court."
Although he could always shoot, Holmes wasn't projected to be much of a player beyond high school simply because he was no bigger than 5-7 as a freshman. But the summer before his sophomore year, he says he slept close to 10 hours a day.
"My AAU coaches would say 'Why you keep sleeping?' " Holmes says. "I said, 'I don't know. I'm just tired.' I just started to grow. ... By the time school started, I was 6-1."
Although Holmes is typically lighthearted and playful, when the subject of last season's MEAC tournament comes up, his mood becomes more serious. He and his teammates believe they have unfinished business after missing out on the NCAA tournament when Morgan State was upset by Coppin State in the conference championship game. Holmes missed a half-court shot at the buzzer that would have won the game, and it still bugs him to this day.
"I didn't want to talk to anybody that night," Holmes says. "I couldn't even sleep. I just kept thinking about that last shot, if I had hit that last half-court shot. ... I had the whole summer to work out and think about it."
Memories of that disappointment drove him to develop the move that finished off Maryland this year: the pump-fake, step-in jumper.
"That's all Bozeman kept talking about, once I get the one-dribble clear or the one-dribble pull-up, I'm going to be deadly," Holmes says. "I've been working all summer on that, but in the beginning of the year, I never used it. Boze would get mad. He'd say, 'Why you not using it? You say you been working on it.' So I started showing him. He just didn't have the proof."
MORGAN STATE (19-11, 12-3)
@ COPPIN STATE (12-17, 9-6) Tonight, 7:30
