Wake Forest has hired East Tennessee State University's Steve Forbes as its men's basketball coach.
The Demon Deacons announced the hiring Thursday after a search that concluded less than a week after the school fired Danny Manning.
Forbes, 55, is coming off a five-year run with ETSU that ended with a 30-win season and a sweep of the Southern Conference regular-season and tournament titles before the NCAA tournament was canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic. He went 130-43 in his time with the Buccaneers, who won at least 24 games each year and also won the SoCon tournament in 2017 to earn the league's automatic NCAA tourney bid.
ETSU said assistant Jason Shay would serve as the program's interim coach while a national search begins for Forbes' replacement.
"Leaving ETSU was not an easy decision for me and for my family," Forbes said in a statement released by Wake Forest.
The Atlantic Coast Conference school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is scheduled to hold a virtual news conference that includes Forbes on Friday.
He inherits a struggling program. The Demon Deacons have managed just two winning seasons and one NCAA bid in the past decade going back to the tenure of Jeff Bzdelik. Manning - a former No. 1 overall NBA draft pick who was a collegiate star at Kansas - had five losing seasons in his six-year tenure, with the highlight an appearance in the NCAA tourney's First Four in 2017.
The challenges will be about more than just winning games. Wake Forest has been hampered by a lack of roster continuity, with a series of players transferring to other college programs or leaving with eligibility remaining to pursue professional careers.
As the losses have piled up, large swaths of empty seats have become common at a quieter Joel Coliseum, known for rowdy game environments during the time when Chris Paul starred for the Demon Deacons and Skip Prosser coached them.
"Coach Forbes has an incredible track record of success, matched only by his reputation for building strong and lasting relationships," Wake Forest athletic director John Currie said in a release. "He operates with a high level of intensity and is not only an effective coach on the floor, but a great recruiter as well."