ACC Basketball: Ranking all 15 head coaches in 2023 after recent changes

5. Steve Forbes – Wake Forest

Forbes has had quite a long basketball journey over the years, starting off with nearly a decade as a junior college head coach before the turn of the century. He’s been an assistant at half a dozen schools, most notably under Porter Moser, Bruce Pearl, and Gregg Marshall over the years. His first D1 head coaching chance came at East Tennessee State and he was immensely successful, winning 130 games in five seasons with the Buccaneers.

Forbes took over at Wake Forest in 2020 and has done very solid work after inheriting a program in ruin. Though his first season was quite slow, the took the Demon Deacons to 25 wins and a 5th-place finish in his second year in Winston-Salem. This past season was not as successful, but this program is trending in a great direction early in his tenure.

While you may consider him overrated, Forbes immediately turned ETSU into a big-time mid-major winner after that program had struggled before his arrival. He’s then transformed Wake Forest into a decent program and could have even bigger things in store in the future. Leading the Demon Deacons to the NCAA Tournament is certainly the next goal, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a coach who’d have done a better job so far at these two programs.