WINSTON-SALEM – Wake Forest won two significant games this week by significantly different margins, and coach Steve Forbes had important points to make after each one.
After Tuesday night’s blowout of Pittsburgh, Forbes made clear that he regretted the way he talked about junior guard Cameron Hildreth after the Deacons’ loss at Virginia.
After Saturday’s watershed win over No. 8 Duke, Forbes wanted to clear up what he said — and what he didn’t — about NCAA tournament prognosticators earlier in the week.
Here is everything Forbes said, with some context mixed in:
“I don’t know if we’re in or out, it’s not my decision to make. We’ve just got four games to play and that’s what we’ve gotta do, and then the tournament. That’s been our mentality the entire time. That’s what I’ve tried really hard with our team to do that, is not look ahead.
“I’ll let them celebrate the win until (Sunday) morning, and then we’ve gotta go play at Notre Dame. So, I don’t know, that’s not my area.”
(this is where his message gets triggered.)
“I’ll just go ahead and say it: I didn’t go on … ‘ACC PM’ to dog Joe Lunardi about bracketology and I don’t know where that message got confusing.”
(Forbes went on ACC Network’s afternoon show with Mark Packer and Taylor Tannebaum on Thursday.)
“I explicitly said that the two things the committee looks at the most when selecting and seeding teams in the NET and KenPom, which I mean, we have good numbers.
“But I’m not an expert in that. I’ll say again: Joe Lunardi has made a living off predicting the NCAA tournament. He’s made a career out of it, and good for him. I’m not mad at him, it’s not like I don’t like him. I don’t even know him. I’ve never even had a conversation with him.
“The issue that I had was a comment that he made a year ago, when he explicitly said that Moses Wright, Alondes Williams and Isaiah Wong were the last three players of the year, compared to Zion (Williamson) and (Marvin) Bagley and (Malcolm) Brogdon.”
(Wright was the player of the year when Georgia Tech won the ACC tournament in 2021; Williams obviously was at Wake Forest for the 2021-22 season; Wong of Miami was the player of the year last season. Virginia’s Brogdon was player of the year for the 2015-16 season, Bagley (2017-18) and Williamson (2018-19) were one-and-done phenoms from Duke.)
“And then he said, basically, if we’re going to complain then we just ought to get back to having the best players. I just didn’t think that was right.
“First of all, it’s disrespectful to those three kids because being a player of the year, I didn’t realize that was a prerequisite to having a great league. Or having a tournament résumé or getting a seed.
“And quite frankly, he neglected to say that when Moses Wright got player of the year, he led his team to the ACC tournament championship, got COVID and didn’t get to play in the NCAA tournament. But the No. 4 pick in the draft … was Scottie Barnes (of Florida State).
“OK, now you go to the next year and he’s going to say that about Alondes? When Paolo Banchero was the No. 1 pick in the draft? We had three first-round ACC picks that made second-team All-ACC.”
(From the 2021-22 season and the All-ACC second-team, Wake’s Jake LaRavia, Notre Dame’s Blake Wesley and Duke’s Wendell Moore Jr.)
“Then we had a third-team All-ACC player who was a first-round pick, Mark Williams (of Duke). And we had another ACC player who didn’t even make all-league that was a first-round pick, AJ Griffin (of Duke).
“We had two teams play in the Final Four, one team in the Elite Eight (Miami), and one team play for the national championship (UNC). That’s not a down league. That was a disrespectful thing to say.
“And to say that about Wong? This guy led his team to the Final Four and was a second-round pick. Malcolm Brogdon was a second-round pick, he didn’t lead his team to the Final Four.”
(In Brogdon’s player of the year season at Virginia, the No. 1-seed Cavaliers blew a 15-point lead in the Elite Eight and lost to No. 10 Syracuse, 68-62. Neither Duke team with Bagley or Williamson reached the Final Four, either.)
“I was upset about that. Not about bracketology. I just kinda kept it in for a while.
“Here’s the thing with the draft, let’s go NET on the leagues, in the NBA. Quad-1, SEC, 56 NBA players the last five years, 31 first, 25 second.
“ACC, 41. Quad-2. We’ve been Quad-1 for history, but we’ll go Quad-2 for five (years). The Big Ten, the Pac-12 and the Big 12, they’re in Quad-3. They’ve had 33, 28 and 24. That’s not close to 56 and 41.
“And Quad-4 is the Big East and the Mountain West. They’re 13 and nine. Nobody’s on the bubble. We don’t have a bubble, in my net.”
(We’re establishing a new quad system here that is, quite frankly, a lot easier to understand than the one the NCAA uses to rank teams.)
“That doesn’t mean the leagues should be ranked that way, I’m not saying that. Because look what the Big East has done with Villanova and UConn, unbelievable.
“But if you look at who has the best players and how it shakes out, that’s how it shakes out.
“So, that’s why I was upset about Joe Lunardi, and I said (that) about staying in his lane and talking about players.”
(This has been a key point throughout the year from Forbes, as he harps on staying in his lane.)
“I think we’ve all got good leagues. And listen, I love the ACC and I’m going to stick up for it. That’s just the way it’s going to be as long as I’m here.
“Sorry to get off on a tangent there, but I don’t like being misrepresented. And the Field of 68 misrepresented me by putting out some stupid graphic saying that I don’t believe in bracketology.”
(That tweet has since been deleted by an account that, as of Sunday afternoon, as 92.3 thousand followers.)
“I didn’t say that, and I’ve got no problem with Joe Lunardi. The guy makes a living predicting the tournament, good for him. I never, one time, said we should be in or out. Have I?”
(No, he hasn’t.)
“I said we’ve got a lot of work to do. And we do. Let’s talk about the game.”
(The next question was about Hunter Sallis and his 29-point game on 11-for-13 shooting against Duke.)
