Wake Forest Tabs Forbes as Manning's Replacement
As we wait for the college basketball season, which is still more than six months away, we saw a Power Five school create an opening in the coaching ranks over the weekend. Wake Forest fired Danny Manning on Saturday after his six years with the program, where the team had a winning record just once in that span. Nearly as quickly as the position was opened, the Demon Deacons filled the spot as they announced that they had found their new head man on Thursday morning.
After less than a week looking to bring in a new coach, Wake Forest announced that the school had hired Steve Forbes to take over the program. Forbes had success at ETSU in what was his first head coaching job at the Division I level. In five seasons with the Buccaneers, he posted a 130-43 record overall and saw the program record a 71-19 mark in Southern Conference play. East Tennessee State won at least 24 games in each of his five years with the program and didn’t finish worse than 13-5 in SoCon play in that span. Five of the top eight seasons as far as victories at the D-I level for the school have come during Forbes’ tenure.
East Tennessee State won two regular season Southern Conference titles and two SoCon Tournament crowns in Forbes’ time in Johnson City. The team made the NCAA Tournament in 2017, losing 80-65 to fourth-seeded Florida in the opening round as a 13 seed. Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world, including the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, the Buccaneers were in line to make a return to March Madness this season.
On the flip side, Manning struggled in his six years at Winston-Salem. The Demon Deacons were 78-111 under Manning and went a dismal 30-80 in ACC action. That forced Wake Forest to take a chance about moving on from him and looking into bringing some new blood into the program. There were several other candidates in the mix with other coaches from the Southern Conference considered for the job such as UNC Greensboro’s Wes Miller and Furman’s Bob Richey. In addition, coaches like Winthrop’s Pat Kelsey and UMBC’s Ryan Odom were considered for the job.
From a betting perspective, Forbes had the third-best odds for landing the job among the initial field of candidates laid out. He went off at +500 odds while Miller (+300) and Kelsey (+450) were the two coaches with better odds ahead of him. Seeing how ETSU was 30-4 overall and 16-2 in the Southern Conference this season, it made sense as a hire. Some were surprised given that Kelsey and Odom had ties to the school. Kelsey served as director of basketball operations for Wake Forest from 2001-04 and was an assistant at the school for six years. Odom’s father, Dave, coached at the school from 1989-2001, posting a 240-132 mark with eight NCAA Tournament appearances and a NIT title in 2000.
Forbes is going to have some work to do in order to revitalize a program that has struggled for more than a decade. Three of the team’s top four scorers from a season ago are gone from the program and it’s looking increasingly likely that the top remaining player, Olivier Sarr, could leave the program as well. After all, Sarr developed his game into a viable player under the tutelage of Manning and with the coaching change, he may not feel compelled to stick around. That’s going to put Forbes in an unenviable position for the 2020-21 season, whenever it starts, as there’s a lack of proven commodities currently in the rotation.
Will the move pay dividends? We’ll have to see but Forbes now is in the big time in the middle of Tobacco Road. Wake Forest is hoping that he can rejuvenate the program and get them back to relevance.