When Mike Young took over at Virginia Tech last year, with a handful of players and a long road ahead, he knew exactly which team he wanted to play in the Hokies' closed-door preseason scrimmage. A team that would give his raw, undermanned group a taste of what it was going to face in the ACC.
He called an old Southern Conference sparring partner, Steve Forbes at East Tennessee State, because he needed exactly the challenge Forbes' team would present.
"You better buckle your seat belt and understand what you're about ready to walk into," Young said Thursday night. "They're not going to give an inch. There's no BS. No frills. It is tough."
And what happened?
"I think it was about even at the half and then he blew my doors off in the second half," Young said. "You have no idea how bad we were in late October. We didn't know if we were coming or going."
That East Tennessee State team ended up winning 30 games, putting Forbes in position to take the Wake Forest job Thursday and be formally introduced Friday. Young, meanwhile, was somehow able to make Virginia Tech competitive using twine and duct tape and zip ties _ the Hokies, a month later, beat third-ranked Michigan State in Hawaii _ despite being in roughly the same situation at VT that Forbes now finds himself in at Wake Forest.
Players fleeing the program annually was the lasting legacy of Danny Manning's misbegotten tenure, and that didn't change when he was fired. Only one contributor from last season is still on the roster _ Isaiah Mucius _ while seven others are in the transfer portal. Two of Manning's four recruits have walked away and two incoming transfers are in limbo. (One is Isaiah Wilkins, formerly of Virginia Tech.) Even as Forbes tries to convince as many as possible to stay, he's not only rebuilding the program from the ground up, he's rebuilding the roster he thought he might inherit.
That's a difficult task at any school, even tougher in the ACC. Even tougher when outgunned in the ACC. Even tougher in the middle of a pandemic.
"There's no blueprint on how to go about it with the conditions that we're living under," Young said. "But if his track record is any guide, he will get it right and he'll do so in a hurry. He's a smart guy. He's looking at the long term, not just through today's lens, next season's lens. It's not easy. Steve knows that. I knew that going in."
Young, who came to Virginia Tech from Wofford, was able to make it work, thanks in part to redshirt freshman star Landers Nolley, who has since transferred to Memphis. The Hokies won seven ACC games, with wins over would-be NCAA teams like Syracuse and N.C. State, as well as North Carolina and Clemson (twice). That was one more conference win than Wake Forest had in Manning's sixth season.
"It's very possible to have that as an immediate goal and work toward it," Forbes said. "Mike is a good example of a guy who came in and did it."
Forbes is basically starting with a blank slate at Wake Forest, with the added handicap that he can't head out on the road and recruit Friday afternoon the way Young was able to do after his (actual, not virtual) introductory press conference. But Forbes can, even starting Thursday, begin to instill the kind of mentality and identity his teams were known for at East Tennessee State _ the identity that Young thought could serve as a crucible for his own team.
"I want someone to come to one of our games and say, 'Hey man, I don't really know a lot about basketball, but I went to a game at the Joel on Saturday, and them guys play hard,'" Forbes said. "They play together. They shared the ball. They were tough on defense. They grabbed every rebound with two hands. They ran their plays. They executed."
It's not a complicated formula, but it's predicated on effort and hard-nosed man-to-man defense. That would be popular among Wake Forest fans who tuned out Manning's last few teams for their lassitude, especially on defense, but so would some positive reinforcement if the Demon Deacons, even undermanned, can find a way to win as many games as Virginia Tech did a year ago.
That would represent considerable progress for Wake Forest. And not just in the standings.
