You can take Jernard Jarreau out of Louisiana, briefly. But you can't remove the Bayou from the former Washington Huskies power forward.
The 6-foot-10 New Orleans native made 29 starts and appeared in 53 total games from 2011-15 for Lorenzo Romar, and proved to be a consistent presence in the paint alongside teammates Desmond Simmons, Shawn Kemp Jr., and in his final season, Robert Upshaw.
Jarreau averaged 3.9 points and 3.4 rebounds at UW over his three playing seasons—with one redshirt year in 2011-12—before he opted to return to his home state to finish out his college basketball career at Tulane for then-coach Ed Conroy.
Although Jarreau enjoyed personal success with career highs in scoring average (7.9 points per game) and rebounds (5.6 boards
per game), he made 10 fewer starts for the Green Wave than he did his final season under Romar.
Team success didn't materialize either, with the American Athletic Conference program ending the 2015-16 season with a 12-22 overall record, despite three players averaging double figures that season and having three more wins the previous season under Conroy.
A pair of 2025-26 staffers take on new roles as Jernard Jarreau is the new video coordinator and Vernice Seriale III is the Player Development Analyst.
— Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns® Men's Basketball (@RaginCajunsMBB) September 2, 2026
We also welcome Tylyn Trummer (formerly at Denver) as the new Chief of Staff.#GeauxCajuns pic.twitter.com/yeH0E8SCPx
True to his roots, Jarreau made his way back to New Orleans after a stint with the Windsor Express, a Canadian professional men's basketball team based in Windsor, Ontario, to reinvest himself in his community and build out his own basketball coaching journey.
Jarreau spent a little over two years working for Collegiate Academies, which is characterized on the organization's LinkedIn profile as "the first charter management organization in New Orleans to focus solely on high schools," with the former Husky hired as a physical education teacher from June 2023-25.
That foray into working with high schoolers in The Big Easy grew simultaneously into an opportunity to be the head boys basketball coach at Livingston Collegiate Academy, a public charter school at the 3A level in Louisiana. Similar to his tenure returning to the Bayou State at Tulane to end his college career, Jarreau guided the program to a 7-30 record, equaling the number of wins the boys basketball program boasted the prior season.
Instead of viewing his experience as a deterrent to pursuing his coaching career at a higher level, Jarreau, much like his playing days, pivoted and enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in May 2025 and served as a graduate assistant coach for first-year Ragin' Cajuns coach Quannas White.
Also a fellow New Orleans native and renowned recruiter at Houston from 2017-25 for longtime college and NBA coach Kelvin Sampson, White and Jarreau first connected in 2015-16 at Tulane when the now-Sun Belt head coach was in his second season with the Green Wave as an assistant.
After an 11-22 first season at the helm of the Ragin' Cajuns men's basketball program, White made sure his first GA hire stuck around for another campaign. Jarreau received a promotion to be the team's new video coordinator, more of a behind-the-scenes role that is expected to involve the ex-UW forward analyzing game and practice film, being a unique set of eyes for White to lean on in his second season, and other roles that should give him a strong footing to continue to grow in the coaching profession.
Jarreau and the Sun Belt program face another former Husky, assistant coach Will Conroy, in 2026-27 when UL Lafayette travels to Los Angeles on November 22 to play USC at the Galen Center. As a player, Jarreau went 1-1 in two games against the Trojans, the last being a 70-55 loss as a senior after scoring, at the time, a career-high 12 points to lead the Huskies to a 65-57 win over their Pac-12 rival at Alaska Airlines Arena when he was a redshirt freshman in 2012-13.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Ex-Washington Basketball Forward Blazing His Own Unique Coaching Trail
