‘I owe everything to him’: Steve Forbes credits Gregg Marshall for Wake Forest hire
It’s been nearly two weeks since Steve Forbes was hired as the head coach of the Wake Forest men’s basketball team, a life-changing moment for the 55-year-old.
Forbes is now in charge of one of the 15 programs in the prestigious Atlantic Coast Conference and peers with Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim and Tony Bennett. He’ll be in contact with Demon Deacon alums like Tim Duncan and Chris Paul.
This opportunity was the result of the tremendous success Forbes enjoyed at East Tennessee State, where he compiled a 130-43 record as head coach in the last five seasons. But as Forbes tells it, this opportunity wouldn’t be possible without the decision of Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall to hire him as an assistant in 2013.
“I’m indebted to coach Marshall on a lot of levels for the rest of my life,” Forbes told the Eagle. “I wouldn’t be here talking to you as head coach at Wake Forest if it wasn’t for Gregg. I owe everything to him. Ultimately, it was his decision to bring me on and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Forbes only spent two seasons as an assistant at WSU, from 2013-15, but it was monumental for his career because Marshall had granted him a return to the Division I level after Forbes had been fired as an assistant at Tennessee in 2011 and slapped with a one-year show cause penalty by the NCAA.
The entire Tennessee coaching staff was fired, brought down by recruiting violations committed solely by head coach Bruce Pearl. Forbes was never implicated in any wrong-doing, but he refused to throw Pearl, his boss, under the bus to NCAA investigators and received the show cause penalty.
“I remember when we got fired at Tennessee thinking to myself, ‘I’m probably never going to be a Division I head coach now,’” Forbes said.
Forbes was banished to the junior college level, where he became a head coach at Northwest Florida State and guided the program to two straight national championship games and a 61-6 record. It was evident he could coach, but he worried his reputation had been sullied by the show cause penalty.
When an opening became available on WSU’s coaching staff following the Final Four run in the 2012-13 season, Marshall did his due diligence and came to the conclusion that Forbes could be an asset given the chance. He went to bat for Forbes with WSU’s administration and convinced them to approve the hire in the summer of 2013.
“I went to my administration and said, ‘Listen, you can do all of the studying on this that you want and I want you to, but in the end I think what you’re going to find is the quality of man, the quality of coach and the quality of person is tremendous for what we can pay,’” Marshall told WFNZ, a Charlotte radio station, on May 1.
With its most talented roster returning with the Final Four experience, Wichita State also had perhaps its best coaching staff for the 2013-14 season — with Forbes joining Chris Jans and Greg Heiar as assistants on Marshall’s staff.
It wasn’t a coincidence that season saw the Shockers complete the greatest season in program history, breaking the NCAA record with 35 straight wins to the start the season before falling to Kentucky in an epic duel in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
“That was a special time and a special group of players,” Forbes said. “Building chemistry is really important not just for your team, but also for your staff and we had a really good chemistry. When I first got there, I didn’t really say a whole lot and I just tried to stay out of the way. That was a well-oiled machine I walked into. I just gave my opinion when I felt like it was needed and most of the time I stayed out of the way. Being on a staff, you’ve got to know your role and I knew my role and it worked out great.”
It’s also not a coincidence that success has followed Forbes wherever he’s been in his career.
In his first season as an assistant at Texas A&M under Billy Gillespie in the 2004-05 season, the Aggies won 21 games and finished with a winning record for the first time in more than a decade. In five seasons as an assistant at Tennessee under Pearl, the Volunteers reached the program’s first Elite Eight, won a school-record 31 games and won the program’s first SEC title in more than four decades. In two seasons at WSU under Marshall, the Shockers finished a combined 65-6, made NCAA history and attained the program’s first No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
All three coaches — Gillespie, Pearl and Marshall — won conference coach of the year awards with Forbes on staff. Forbes said working under all three of those successful head coaches has taught him something, but he considers his two seasons with Marshall invaluable.
“You get an education from those people. It’s like you get a bachelor’s, a master’s and a doctoral and then you’re a PhD,” Forbes said. “The thing that sticks out the most about coach Marshall is his attention to detail and his ability to run the entire program. Some coaches are good at certain things and weak at others. I don’t think (Marshall) has any weaknesses. He’s a tremendous basketball coach, a very good recruiter, good with people, good with donors, good with fans, knows how to communicate. He doesn’t really have any weaknesses and he basically gave me the blueprint on how to run a program on a day-to-day basis.”
Since leaving Wichita, Forbes has continued to lean on Marshall as a mentor in the years since. Especially the last few when Forbes has become a popular name in coaching searches following his success at East Tennessee State. Marshall is no stranger to being courted by Power 5 programs, so Forbes has picked his mind about what goes into his decision-making process.
“Coach Marshall gave me the advice that you don’t mess with happy,” Forbes said. “And I was very happy at East Tennessee State. I knew it would take something to knock my socks off for me to leave.”
Some might not see Wake Forest as an appealing option. The ACC is largely considered the deepest and most talented league annually and lately, Wake Forest has been near the bottom of the standings. The Demon Deacons have just one NCAA Tournament to their name in the last decade and haven’t had a winning record in the ACC since 2010.
But Wake Forest has top-notch facilities and academics, something Forbes believes can be a selling point for him in recruiting. In fact, he sees many similarities to the situation when he took over at East Tennessee State.
“It’s a proud program that had tradition in the past and just needed a spark. It just needs to be woken up,” Forbes said.
Marshall has complete confidence in Forbes’ ability to turn around Wake Forest.
“Wake Forest has a lot of tradition and Steve is going to get that back,” Marshall said in the Charlotte radio station interview. “He does nothing but win anywhere he’s been. It’s not a coincidence that all he ever does is win.
“It’s going to take some time, I wouldn’t expect a miracle. But one year from now, you’re going to see a trajectory for the program that’s a different trajectory than the one they’ve been on recently.”
This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 7:30 AM.
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