• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Steve Forbes credibility watch

WakeFanAdam said:
High school recruiting is dead. Don’t even waste time. Let other schools dump all their money on freshmen, then Wake can snatch them up from the transfer portal for free.
Click to expand...
Terrible take unfortunately. If we build our program this way, last year is our ceiling, this year is our average, and our floor is missing the NIT. Think about it:

Last year, we hit home runs on three portal additions (Alondes, Jake, Dallas) and added a very nice bench piece in Sy. This year, we had exactly 0 of those guys back, limiting their contribution to the program to one decent season.

This season, we added a more typical portal class (home run on Appleby, total dud with Bradford, and disappointing / uninspiring with Carr). After this year, that home run is gone.

It's key to note that the portal will be drying up a little once the extra covid year flows through. The player pool shrinks. There will be no more Dallas, Khadim,

Bobi and Keller are in no way "bad" freshmen or bad recruits, and that narrative pisses me off a little. They will be good, they just shouldn't be playing this much because there should be two older versions of them ahead of them in the rotation, but we haven't built our program that way yet and when Jake left we were caught undermanned. My hope is that this year is a developmental year for them and that they both take big steps the next two seasons, and we bring in freshmen behind them to sit and learn the way they should be doing this year. Marsh started way behind where Keller is now and look how much he grew from last year to this year. Keller will be a solid starting ACC 4/5 as a junior and senior and a lot more serviceable next year as a sophomore. Bobi had no summer ball with this team and needed that time to add 10 pounds and get more acclimated. There is still a lot of potential there that I'm excited about in years 2-4. Roster continuity and player development are going to be key for us going forward, a lot more than transfer hunting.
 
Forbes is competent. I would take a Brownell-type tenure until the next coach, at this point.

I don't know what the ceiling for the program is anymore. Miami/VT/GT/Cuse/ND/FSU all had bright moments in the last 10 seasons, yet we haven't done anytihng since Dino and we don't seem any closer to it. Even Pitt, who has been irrelevant since Dixon left, has had more recent success than we have.

RTQ will have to start making a big difference or we need to keep striking gold in the transfer market and hope it all comes together for 1 season. Jake would have been a great NIL experiment. If we threw enough cash at him before his stock rose, maybe he would have considered staying.
 
I think hosting an NIT game should be our goal for this season. Hopefully a couple more winning seasons and our NIL getting up and running can help us improve HS recruiting and thus the program. I like Forbes, but think it's pretty clear he's not a "legendary" coach as we may have hoped. Upper half of the ACC, probably.
 
atldeac23 said:
I think hosting an NIT game should be our goal for this season. Hopefully a couple more winning seasons and our NIL getting up and running can help us improve HS recruiting and thus the program. I like Forbes, but think it's pretty clear he's not a "legendary" coach as we may have hoped. Upper half of the ACC, probably.
Click to expand...
I'm reluctantly headed there. This is me and a Wake friend texting after the LSU loss.

I trust Forbes to put together watchable teams who can beat decent opponents. But that’s about it honestly. But I also don’t know how much better we can do.
Click to expand...
Exactly my feeling

I don’t want a different coach. In fact, one of my thoughts is that if he can’t get it done here probably no one after him will
Click to expand...
Yes. And that’s the scary part.
Click to expand...
 
atldeac23 said:
I think hosting an NIT game should be our goal for this season. Hopefully a couple more winning seasons and our NIL getting up and running can help us improve HS recruiting and thus the program. I like Forbes, but think it's pretty clear he's not a "legendary" coach as we may have hoped. Upper half of the ACC, probably.
Click to expand...
It's impossible to judge coaches these days and frankly it's impossible to be a coach. Your job 365 days a year is recruiting because at any given time any player can leave or become available, but you are handcuffed in this effort because 17 year olds want you to pay them $100k for sign for one season. This is why Jay Wright and Roy Williams left coaching and many more actual legendary coaches will soon.

With that said, even before college sports went to hell, judging a coach this early is silly. Lots of people looked at last year as year 1 for Forbes, but really this is year 1 for me. First year doesn't count for obvious reasons, and last year was a flash in the pan with two star transfers. This is the first roster Forbes has built with continuity and development in mind. Here is what we will have eligibility wise after this year:

Keller: 3 more years
Bobi: 3 more years
McCray: 3 more years
Marsh: 2 more years
Hildreth: 2 more years
Ituka: 2 more years
Carr: 2 more years
Monsanto: 2 more years (already 22 years old, though, despite playing like he's 18)
Bradford: 2 more years (won't be shocked if he is portal bound to find a more suitable mid/low major level)
Taylor: 2 more years

If Forbes develops these players into the core of a 20+ win team over the next few years, we have ourselves a strong basketball program. We will obviously need to save ourselves with another portal PG next year, but that is probably the one position where I'm more comfortable with leaving it up to the portal as guards tend to be a dime a dozen. Next year's starting lineup will be:

PG: transfer (or maybe Ituka?), SG: Hildreth, SF: Monsanto/Taylor/Bobi, PF: Carr/Bobi/Keller, C: Marsh/Keller/transfer?

Whatever the combo ends up being, it should be a competitive team as long as we land ourselves a good lead guard. Even from that team, almost everybody would be back for 2024-25
 
atldeac23 said:
I think hosting an NIT game should be our goal for this season. Hopefully a couple more winning seasons and our NIL getting up and running can help us improve HS recruiting and thus the program. I like Forbes, but think it's pretty clear he's not a "legendary" coach as we may have hoped. Upper half of the ACC, probably.
Click to expand...
Whoa, top half?!

The only ACC coach I would say has less D1 accomplishments is Grant. Payne (lol) and Scheyer don't have a track record yet.

Forbes won a ton of games at ETSU and 2 conference championships in 5 seasons. He is 0-2 NCAA and 0-2 ACCT, and wouldn't bet on an NCAA bid this season. He would have to have monster seasons in year 4 and 5 to match what he did with the Bucs.

He is at a program that has fallen off mightily from where it was. It looks like he has legit cash support now, so lets see what he can do. If we aren't contending for a conference championship in the next two seasons, than he probably is a Brownell/Keatts parallel at this level. That's not terrible, but not where we want to be. Would you want to extend that? At this point, maybe.
 
Forbes has very little to base a judgement off of right now as I've laid out, but I think as of now I would have him ahead of Hubert Davis, Earl Grant, Jeff Capel, Kenny Payne, Kevin Keatts, Josh Pastner, and (current, not over his career) Jim Boeheim. I worry that what Bromwell has done at Clemson (make a trash basketbeall program mediocre but never threaten a run in March) is what Forbes becomes, but I really hope not. Again, coaching has never been crazier or harder to understand than right now in this hellscape of portal, realignment, and pay for play.
 
Forbes took the job at a really weird and difficult time. I consider his first season a total write-off and said when he was hired that it wouldn't be fair to judge him before the end of the current season. Let's see where we are in March. I'm definitely scratching my head over a few of the losses last year and this year but am okay with the trajectory of the program right now. Even John Wooden couldn't have quickly or easily fixed the mess Wellman/Bz/Manning left behind.
 
inspectah said:
Forbes took the job at a really weird and difficult time. I consider his first season a total write-off and said when he was hired that it wouldn't be fair to judge him before the end of the current season. Let's see where we are in March. I'm definitely scratching my head over a few of the losses last year and this year but am okay with the trajectory of the program right now. Even John Wooden couldn't have quickly or easily fixed the mess Wellman/Bz/Manning left behind.
Click to expand...

I watched a number of John Wooden teams in the 70s. I never recall him losing a 20 point lead. If he did, the team found their own transportation home.
 
Blowing a 20 point lead in the first half still not as bad as blowing an 8 point lead with 2 minutes left.
 
No credibility at the moment. The boards could make better in-game decisions and lineup choices.
 
Last edited:
Wow. This thread is woof. Forbes will be fine once we start playing the NIL game, which it looks like we finally are. This was always going to be a 3-5 year rebuild
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top