NCAA Basketball rewind: Most impactful coaching hires after 2015 season
By Joey Loose
6. Steve Forbes (East Tennessee State)
East Tennessee State had certainly been a solid mid-major program in recent memory, though it hadn’t translated into as much success as expected. Still, the Buccaneers found themselves moving back to the SoCon in 2014, has done fantastic work in the A-Sun for the last decade. With old coach Murray Bartow out, the program needed a new voice to jumpstart their run in a new conference, and boy did they get that with their next hire.
Steve Forbes hadn’t yet been a D1 head coach, but he had a lot of coaching experience. He had been head coach at three smaller colleges and had a lot of years as a D1 assistant. Among those years, he spent time on the staffs of coaches like Porter Moser, Billy Gillispie, Bruce Pearl, and Gregg Marshall. He had just spent the last two years on staff at Wichita State during a great run of success for the Shockers.
The Buccaneers were fantastic for all five of Forbes’s years in East Tennessee. Each season ended in at least 24 wins and a top 3 finish in the SoCon. He led the team to an NCAA Tournament and would’ve had a second prior to its cancellation in 2020. Forbes won nearly 80% of conference games, and that 30-win team in 2020 was pretty special. Bigger challenges loomed for Forbes, taking over at Wake Forest a few months later, while East Tennessee State looks for consistency again.