Steve Forbes has been around the college basketball block. The 60-year-old has Division I experience at East Tennessee State, Texas A&M, Illinois State, Louisiana Tech, Idaho, and now Wake Forest. He is trying
to get the Demon Deacons to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since he took the job in 2020.
A win against Michigan in the Wolverine-Deacon challenge certainly would have helped Wake Forest’s resumé come March, but the Demon Deacons came up just short, falling to Michigan in overtime, 85-84.
“Credit to Michigan, they got up on us early, we couldn’t keep them out of transition, they were really good in transition,” Forbes said. “They had the game going their way.”
Michigan head coach Dusty May was able to exact revenge on Wake Forest, with Steve Forbes and the Demon Deacons beating the Wolverines last season, 72-70. It was the first loss of May’s Michigan tenure.
The two head coaches appear to have a good relationship with one another, and Forbes took time in his postgame press conference to praise May for his ability to build a cohesive roster that has Final Four aspirations.
“I’ve known Dusty a long time, I think he’s a hell of a coach,” Forbes said. “I think he’s done a really good job of constructing a roster. Like you can construct pieces, but he’s got a roster that’s pretty damn impressive. That’s why it would have been a great win for us because it would have aged well like it did last year.”
When asked by Maize n Brew about whether he would be interested in continuing to play May’s squad in non-conference play moving forward, the Iowa native who grew up on Big Ten basketball did not shy away from saying he would support another sort of challenge for both programs.
“I don’t know, we’ll see, we used to play the Big Ten challenge, I’m not against it,” Forbes said. “Both are really good academic institutions, take it real serious, got real school where we’re at, I’m sure you do too. We’ll see, I’m up for anything.”
For those unaware, Forbes is one of the most entertaining quotes in the sport, so I highly recommend watching the video of his press conference when you get time. He’s got a Ron White-like sense of humor and is unafraid of speaking his mind in a sport full of PR-friendly answers — he lets it fly.
Here are a few more gems from Forbes presser:
-“Dusty was good enough to do it when he got the job, I’m sure he probably thought he was going to sweep my ass,” Forbes said with a chuckle.
-On how to prepare for Mara: “Get badmintons out, I think? Does anybody play badminton? You don’t, you can’t emulate that in practice. You can’t really tell how tall he is until you walk out there, that’s why I didn’t come out for warm-ups, I didn’t want to see it, I stayed in the back.”
-“It’s hard to believe going back to last year that we finished fourth in the ACC and we beat the Big Ten Tournament champs and didn’t make the tournament, it’s crazy to me, this world that we live in, but it is what it is.”
-Steve Forbes, jokingly, on former UNC point guard Elliot Cadeau: “I’ve seen him too much, I’m sick of him.”
-“They started the tallest lineup in college basketball, right? I thought, ‘Holy shit, who is going to guard these guys?’”
-Quote of the night: “I’m from Iowa, I still haven’t figured out why you guys are the champions of the west and not the champions of the freaking Midwest. I don’t get that part of it.”
