Wake Forest Basketball: Who could potentially replace Danny Manning in the future?

Danny Manning has been at Wake Forest Basketball for six seasons and it might be time to move on. Who should emerge as a top candidate, if there is a change?

When the basketball came to an abrupt end thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, that meant that teams could get a head start on the offseason. The coaching carousel is in full swing, and while they haven’t yet and some think they may not, given how they finished the year, one team that could look to make a coaching change is Wake Forest.

Six years into the Danny Manning experiment and it is clear that things haven’t quite worked out the way neither the school or the former Kansas great had hoped. In six seasons under Manning, the Demon Deacons have had just one winning season, a 19-14 record with a 10th place finish in the ACC, with his only post-season appearance with the school, a trip to the First Four in 2016-17, they would lose to Kansas State in Dayton.

In his other five seasons, Manning has won no more than 13 games and despite a win over Duke late in the season, the Demon Deacons have failed to gain any sort of traction at all in the conference, never mind the national landscape.

The forgotten team that resides on Tobacco Road have had plenty of NCAA Tournament appearances, they have reached the Sweet Sixteen just once since their Elite Eight season of 1996. If the school does decide to make another coaching change and move on from Manning in search of someone who can bring them back to more sustained success, there is one candidate who should be among the school’s first phone calls when they begin their search.