Steve Forbes (born March 22, 1965) is an American men's college basketball head coach for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
[1] A native of Lone Tree, Iowa, Forbes graduated from Southern Arkansas University with a degree in secondary education in 1988.
A former baseball student-athlete for the Muleriders, Forbes spent one year at his alma mater as the sports information director before embarking on a coaching career.
Picked to finish last in the Big 12 prior to the 2004-05 season, the Aggies won their first 11 games and went on to a 21-10 record and made an appearance in the National Invitation Tournament.
The Aggies defeated Syracuse in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before falling to eventual Final Four participant LSU on a last-second shot.
Tennessee won a school-record 31 games in 2008, and their 14-2 league record gave the program its first outright SEC championship in more than 40 years.
Forbes’ experience also helped Tennessee's 2006, 2008 and 2010 recruiting classes to a top 10 national ranking by multiple ratings services.
[5] In 2011, the same year Forbes was fired from Tennessee, he was hired by Northwest Florida State, a junior college, as the head coach of their program.
During his two-year tenure in Niceville, Florida, he coached the Raiders to a 62-6 record and had five of his junior college players transfer to Division I schools in the offseason.
His recruiting ties and his extensive background as an assistant coach at the NCAA Division I level made him the perfect fit for the ETSU program according to the school's athletic director, Dr. Richard Sander.
On April 30, 2020, Forbes was hired as head coach at Wake Forest University by John Currie, replacing Danny Manning.