College of Coastal Georgia Men's Basketball

Watkins had been the team's top assistant coach the previous two seasons under longtime head coach Gerald Cox who retired following the 2014 season after 32 years with the progam and 40 years coaching in the collegiate ranks. Watkins played here under Cox from 1990-92 before going on to finish his collegiate career at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. When he returned to Coastal Georgia two years ago to become an assistant coach, Watkins became the first former player to work under Cox as a paid assistant. Watkins took the head position with 18 years of coaching experience. He began his coaching career in 1995 at Pineville (Ky.) High before returning to Lincoln Memorial as a graduate assistant for two years from 1997-1999. He spent the 1999-2000 season as the head boys and girls coach at J. Frank White Academy, also in Harrogate, before returning to the college ranks at Wabash Valley Junior College, where he was an assistant for two seasons and helped the team to the National Junior College Athletic Association championship in 2001 with a 36-1 record before it finished 33-3 the following year while reaching the national semifinals. Watkins then moved to Southern Indiana, where he worked as an assistant for two seasons, helping the team to a runner-up finish in the NCAA Division II national tournament in 2004. He would spend one season as an assistant at both Mount Healthy High in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, before becoming an administrator and head of player development at Evansville Basketball Academy in Evansville, Ind., where he worked from 2006 to 2012 before returning to Coastal Georgia. While employed by the academy, Watkins also coached the Indiana S.W.I.S.H. AAU Under-17 team which posted a 105-53 record and produced several collegiate players in his time with the team. Tommy Yancey accepted the job as the Coastal Georgia mens basketball assistant coach prior to the 2015-16 school year. Yancey joined the Mariners after having spent time as both a head coach and assistant at several other schools in the high school and collegiate ranks. Before coming to Coastal Georgia, Yancey coached at Grace Christian Academy in Bainbridge where he was head boys and girls basketball coach along with serving as the schools athletic director. In the 2013-14 season, he guided both teams to their respective state tournaments, marking the first time in school history both earned state berths in the same season. Prior to that, Yancey was a men's assistant coach for three seasons at St. Johns River State College in Florida, where the team had two of its best seasons record-wise since the 1960s. Before going to St. Johns, he was the head boys coach for one season at Schley County in Ellaville, leading his team there to its second-best record in school history at the time. Yancey began his coaching career at Brookstone High in Columbus under Robert Moore, who was his coach when he played in Georgias junior college ranks at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton. Yancey finished his degree in social sciences at Troy University in 2006. He played college basketball at both ABAC and Georgia Southwestern in Americus. He helped Georgia Southwestern to the NAIA national tournament in the 2005 season when the school competed in the Southern States Athletic Conference. A native of Loganville, Yancey graduated from Piedmont Academy, where he was an all-state basketball player while also playing football and baseball.