Wake Forest Basketball: 5 candidates to replace head coach Danny Manning
By Joey Loose
3. Pat Kelsey (Winthrop)
If program familiarity is something that Wake Forest favors, then a candidate like Kelsey will be very close to the top of their list. The current head coach at Winthrop spent nearly a decade on the coaching staff at Wake Forest under Skip Prosser and Dino Gaudio. Over the years, he’s become one of the nation’s brightest young coaches, and this could be the job that lures him away from Winthrop.
After playing for Prosser at Xavier, Kelsey eventually joined his staff at Wake Forest. The former Xavier assistant became Winthrop’s head coach in 2012 and the results speak for themselves. The Eagles have won a pair of Big South titles and have finished in the top three in the conference in each of the last seven seasons. Kelsey’s 163-93 record is more than a solid in a mid-major league like the Big South. The connection to more glorious days at Wake Forest makes him an intriguing candidate, but there is still an issue at hand.
In 2017, Kelsey was hired as the head coach at Massachusetts but changing his mind just before being introduced by the school. Obviously, Kelsey is unlikely to renege on a deal with an ACC school with which he has familiarity, but it is a slight concern. How he’d handle recruiting again at Wake Forest would be intriguing, though Kelsey would certainly have the ability to get more out of these players than Manning has in recent years.