Wake Forest basketball moved quickly and now has a new head coach.
Former Wichita State assistant and head coach at Northwest Florida State as well as Barton Community College coach Steve Forbes is headed to Wake Forest.
Steve Forbes and Wake Forest have agreed to a deal in principle pending final approval that will make him the school’s next head basketball coach, a source tells 247Sports.
Forbes, 55, became the front-runner for the job late Wednesday evening, and the two sides began working towards a deal early Thursday morning.
After letting go of Danny Manning on Saturday, Wake Forest Athletic Directors John Currie and his search committee moved quickly setting up Zoom interviews on Sunday and Monday with their top candidates. By Tuesday evening, Forbes and UNC Greensboro’s Wes Miller emerged as the favorites.
Wake Forest’s most distinguished basketball alumni — Chris Paul and Tim Duncan — were involved in the school’s head coaching search and participated in Zoom interview calls with potential candidates.
There’s a familiarity between Currie and Forbes. The two worked together at Tennessee during a three-year span. Forbes was an assistant coach for Bruce Pearl and Currie was the school's executive associate Athletic Director at the time.
Forbes accumulated a record of 130-43 in five seasons at ETSU. Forbes led ETSU to a league title twice and finished no worse than third in the conference. ETSU was slated to make its second NCAA Tournament appearance of his tenure this year.
Prior to his time at ETSU, Forbes was an assistant at Wichita State for Gregg Marshall, the head coach at Northwest Florida State, where he finished DI National Runner-Up in his only two seasons, and had assistant coaching stints at UT, Texas A&M, Illinois State and others.
Forbes is a native of Lone Tree, Iowa and graduated from Southern Arkansas in 1988.