Wake Forest’s basketball coaching staff has undergone a change without any personnel leaving or new arrivals.

Matt Woodley is now one of the Deacons’ three assistant coaches, switching positions with Jason Shay, who’s now the program’s special assistant to the head coach. A program spokesperson confirmed that the shift was made for the upcoming season.

Woodley has been with Wake Forest for both of Steve Forbes’ seasons as coach, hired in Sept. 2020. His most-recent job before coming to Wake Forest was as an assistant coach at Drake, his alma mater.

Woodley’s experience in basketball is extensive, though: Before Drake, he spent three seasons with the Iowa Energy of the NBA’s G-League (then the D-League), including as head coach in 2016-17. Woodley was special assistant to the head coach at Pittsburgh in Kevin Stallings’ last season as coach (2017-18). He was the head coach at Division-II Truman State and was an assistant coach under Tony Bennett at Washington State from 2006-09.

There are two main differences in which the countable assistant coaches – college teams can have no more than three, and they’re either assistant coaches or associate head coaches – can do things that other staff members can’t. They are:

- Travel for recruiting and conduct in-home visits.

- Conduct on-court instruction during practice periods.

Other staff members can be designated as on-court instructors if any of the head coach or three assistant coaches are away from the program – i.e., traveling for recruiting.

Shay came to Wake Forest last year after becoming the head coach at East Tennessee State after Wake Forest hired Forbes. Other than being with Forbes at ETSU, Shay worked with him on staffs at Northwest Florida State College and at Tennessee.