As Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes made the trip to San Antonio for the 2024-25 Final Four, his mind was on the 2025-26 season. His team had narrowly missed the NCAA Tournament again, and there were significant holes on his roster to fill.
When he touched down at San Antonio International Airport, he found out that the program had scored its first major win in the transfer portal. Cooper Schwieger, a 6-foot-10 junior forward from Valparaiso, had committed to the Demon Deacons. The highly coveted big man posted 15.8 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2 blocks per game for the Beacons, earning All-Missouri Valley Second Team honors.
From there, the wins kept coming.
While still in San Antonio, Forbes secured the commitment of Purdue transfer Myles Colvin, a 6-foot-5 junior guard, after meeting with Colvin’s agent. A former 4-star recruit, Colvin appeared in all 36 games for the Boilermakers last season, averaging 5.2 points and 2.6 rebounds in 17.8 minutes.
By the time the Final Four ended and Forbes returned home, Wake Forest was on its way to building a team that could very well snap its eight-year NCAA Tournament drought. “I felt really good coming out of that, especially knowing how crazy the market was going to be,” Forbes tells Hoops HQ.
Since taking over at Wake Forest in 2020, Forbes has found tremendous success in the portal, uncovering hidden gems who blossomed into stars. Alondes Williams earned ACC Player of the Year honors after transferring from Oklahoma in 2021, Tyree Appleby made the All-ACC First Team and led the conference in scoring after transferring from Florida in 2022, and Hunter Sallis became a two-time All-ACC selection after transferring from Gonzaga in 2023.
And yet, the Demon Deacons have not made the NCAA Tournament under Forbes. They have won at least 19 games (10 or more in league play) in each of the last four seasons but remained stuck on the wrong side of the bubble, in part due to the greater decline of the ACC. Over that stretch, the conference has not received more than five bids. When the Demon Deacons last went dancing in 2017, the ACC was represented by a record nine schools.
Still, Wake Forest hasn’t helped its case in recent years with critical losses in February and March. The 2024-25 team placed fourth in the ACC at 13-7, but dropped five of its last eight outings. One of those defeats came to NC State, which finished 16th in the league. “That’s one thing that’s hurt us late in the three years we’ve been on the bubble: We haven’t had a lot of depth and we’ve gotten tired,” Forbes says.
This offseason, the staff has put together a deeper roster, beginning with the retention of 6-foot-7 senior forward Tre’Von Spillers, 6-foot-7 sophomore guard Juke Harris, 6-foot-8 junior forward Omaha Billiew and 6-foot-9 redshirt sophomore forward Marqus Marion. Spillers started all 32 games last year and averaged 9.9 points and 7.6 rebounds, while Harris played a key role off the bench as a freshman. Billiew, a 2023 McDonald’s All-American, missed considerable time due to injury.
As the program assembled its list of portal targets, it prioritized three-point shooting and playmaking, two areas where it struggled immensely in 2024-25. The Demon Deacons shot an abysmal 28.5 percent from behind the arc (361st in Division I) and averaged just 11.3 assists per contest (332nd). Despite having gifted scorers Hunter Sallis (18.3 points per game) and Cameron Hildreth (14.7 points per game), both of whom have since exhausted their eligibility, Wake Forest ranked 145th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.
Forbes knew early on that the market for players had increased dramatically; he was told by one coach about a low-major recruit transferring to a mid-major program who would be making more money than all but two players on Wake Forest’s 2024-25 roster. But that didn’t stop Forbes from attacking the portal and bringing in several proven talents.
After landing Schwieger and Colvin, Wake Forest added 6-foot-5 senior guard Mekhi Mason (Washington), 6-foot-2 senior guard Nate Calmese (Washington State) and 6-foot-2 sophomore guard Sebastian Akins (Denver). The Portal Report ranks the team’s transfer class, which is loaded with experience and versatility, second in the ACC.
Mason started 20 of 31 games for the Huskies, averaging 9.9 points and connecting on 40.2 percent of his threes on high volume. Calmese led the Cougars in scoring (15.2 points per game), while also pitching in 4.4 assists and 1.6 steals. Akins, the Summit League Freshman of the Year, provided an offensive spark off the bench (12.7 points per game) for the Pioneers.
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So far, Forbes has been very impressed with the play of his guards. Calmese has looked solid at the point, and Colvin, Mason and Harris have been engaged in a competitive battle on the wings. Colvin is the likeliest candidate to be the next Hunter Sallis or Alondes Williams. As Forbes reports, the former Boilermaker was the team’s top scorer over the summer and has shot 53 percent from three in practice. “One of the biggest reasons why we wanted to recruit him was because he played at Purdue and he played some pretty good minutes,” says Forbes. “He played in the national championship game as a freshman. I don’t know if you can always put a price tag on that kind of experience. And then being coached by Matt Painter. I like good players from good programs. Hunter is a great example of somebody who played for Mark Few, didn’t get to play that much but was really, really well coached.”
Freshman Isaac Carr, a 6-foot-4 guard out of Central Catholic High School in Portland, Ore., has also been a pleasant surprise, and Forbes expects him to play significant minutes right out of the gate.
While the group lacks the size of past Wake Forest teams, Forbes anticipates playing a lot faster and putting more points on the board. New assistant coach Nick Friedman, who comes from the NBA level, has introduced concepts that emphasize better ball movement, spacing and cutting. “I don’t know if I have an all-league player, but I didn’t know that every year except last year, because Hunter had already done it,” says Forbes. “I do know that I’ve got some depth.”
That depth should help the Demon Deacons play uptempo and still conserve energy for a late tournament push. The expectation is that the gap created by the departures of Sallis and Hildreth, particularly on offense, will be filled by several players. Wake Forest is bringing in a handful of dynamic scorers, and Harris, a consensus 4-star prospect in the class of 2024, is in line to make a major leap in an expanded role. “If you ask me today, I’d say it’ll be more of a collective effort than maybe individually, with more depth and just more people that can make shots,” says Forbes. “You never know until the lights come on and you smell the popcorn what’s actually going to transpire.”
The smell of popcorn is wafting closer. When Hoops HQ caught up with Forbes, he was preparing for the first day of official practice. All signs point toward Wake Forest being a force in the ACC again, contending for a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The question is, can the program finally break out of the bubble and into the field?
The ACC as a whole should be much improved, boosting Wake Forest’s chances. And the team will be tested plenty before league play even begins, with non-conference matchups against Michigan, Texas Tech, Memphis or Purdue, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Vanderbilt.
“I’ve been elated with how hard they play, how coachable they are,” Forbes says of his new group. “No drama. They just come in every day and go to work. It’s been a really fun team to coach. They get along well. Again, you don’t know until the lights come on. But I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen.”
