Jennifer DeGraaf enters her fourth season with USC Upstate women’s basketball in 2025-26.
During the 2024-25 campaign, she helped develop Big South Conference Freshman of the Year Cassie Gallagher—also an Honorable Mention All-Big South and Big South All-Freshman Team selection—and Big South All-Freshman Team honoree Gwen Jenkins. Between the two players, Upstate captured eight of a possible 15 Big South Freshman of the Week honors.
She also helped mold the Big South’s top rebounding unit, helping the Spartans lead the league in rebounding margin, defensive rebounds per game, and rebounds per game while tutoring the conference’s top individual rebounder Rebekah Gordon. Following the season, DeGraaf was selected to the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Thirty Under 30.
DeGraaf’s second season with the Spartans saw Upstate qualify for its highest level of postseason basketball in the Division I era (2007-pres.), earning a bid to the 2024 WNIT. The bid followed the program’s best regular season finish in the D1 era, finishing second in the Big South standings and earning the No. 2 seed in the Big South Women’s Basketball Championship. The Spartans advanced to the semifinal round of the Championship for the first time in program history.
She tutored Big South Defensive Player of the Year Trinity Johnson—the program’s first conference Defensive Player of the Year, helping her surpass the 1,000 point, 500 rebound, and 500 assists barriers, becoming the second player in Big South history to hit those marks. Isabell West also brought home Honorable Mention All-Big South accolades under DeGraaf’s tutelage while Upstate as a team led the league in three-point percentage and free throw percentage.
The 2022-23 campaign, DeGraaf’s first with the Spartans, saw Upstate reel off the program’s best start to conference play since 2010-11, winning each of its first three Big South games, including the program’s first-ever victory over High Point.
DeGraaf joined the Spartans following a one-season stint working alongside head coach Jason Williams at Belmont Abbey. The Crusaders collected 19 wins—17 in Conference Carolinas play—in her lone season while she tutored three All-League players, Brittany Autrey (First Team), Jo Snow (Second Team), and Alexis Schulz (Third Team). She also served as the head coach of Belmont Abbey’s junior varsity team.
Before joining the Belmont Abbey coaching staff, she served for one season (2020-21) as the Director of Basketball Operations at her alma mater UNC Wilmington and two seasons (2018-20) as the Director of Player Development at Boston College. Following her senior season, she was selected for the WBCA’s “So You Want To Be A Coach” 2018 class.
Prior to embarking on her coaching career, DeGraaf played collegiately at UNC Wilmington, serving as a two-year captain for the Seahawks and ending her collegiate career as the team’s Most Valuable Player and a Second Team NCCSIA All-State selection. She began her collegiate career at Penn State, entering as a top 100 recruit by Collegiate Girls Basketball Report. She was a member of the Nittany Lions’ 2013-14 Big Ten Regular Season Championship squad that advanced to the Sweet Sixteen.
A native of Springboro, Ohio, DeGraaf graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UNC Wilmington in 2018 and with a Master of Science in Sports Administration in 2020 from Boston College.
