Wake Forest gets a chance to become “unstuck”

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Has the decision already been made to fire Danny Manning as head coach of the Wake Forest men’s basketball program?

Regardless of the answer, the Demon Deacons at least have the choice to chart a new course if they want to.

It is hard to see how they can accept the status quo.

Wake Forest was adrift when Danny Manning came aboard, and it is adrift five years later. Wake Forest hasn’t won 20 games in a season or claimed an NCAA Tournament win since 2010. Manning delivered a First Four appearance in 2017 because John Collins carried him and the Deacs to Dayton. Other than that one flicker of modest quality, Wake couldn’t win more than 13 games in Manning’s other four seasons. Stagnation has defined Wake Forest basketball this decade, and Manning’s five seasons can’t be separated from that larger reality.

Should Wake stick with Manning one more season?

It might not be the most absurd idea in the world, but there’s a reason why Wake should seek a new direction.

Brad Brownell has been given a lot of time to improve Clemson basketball. Andy Kennedy received a lot of time at Ole Miss. Patrick Chambers and Tim Miles are being given ample opportunities to turn around Penn State and Nebraska.

Maybe, one could argue, those coaches were given inordinately long tenures relative to their (lack of) accomplishments. It is a fair point. I am not here to argue whether those tenures were or are appropriate. I will note, however, that those schools are all football schools. Football is the main driver of culture at those athletic programs. It is the greatest point of pride and the sport in which those schools dearly want to succeed. Their basketball histories are relatively barren, which makes it hard to expect a basketball coach to be transcendentally great. This is why Kennedy got so much time at Ole Miss, and why Brownell, Chambers and Miles are still at their respective schools today.

Wake Forest isn’t a football school. Wake Forest’s athletic culture elevates basketball. Wake Forest is supremely happy when its basketball team is competing on even or superior terms with North Carolina, Duke, and North Carolina State.

Winning seven football games a season and going to a third-tier bowl is a good existence for Wake Forest football.

Being barely above .500 on the gridiron is very much in line with a set of reasonable expectations for the Deacs in that theater of activity.

Barely above .500 — or more often, just below it — in basketball? No way. Wake Forest shouldn’t be winning ACC titles every other year, but it should be a 20-win NCAA Tournament program in most seasons. Basketball is taken way too seriously in the state of North Carolina for Wake to languish as it has the past decade.

This is what separates Wake from Clemson in the ACC, and from Ole Miss, Penn State, and Nebraska beyond the conference.

This is why, if you ask me, Wake can’t stick with Manning. Getting “unstuck” requires a new vision and a new leader.

The first choice should be Wes Miller, the head coach of the UNC-Greensboro Spartans. North Carolina State went with Kevin Keatts from UNC-Wilmington, and although Keatts has hit some speedbumps in his first few seasons, he certainly shows promise as the man who will lead the Wolfpack to better days in the future. Miller is young but experienced as a head coach, having worked at UNCG since 2011 in that capacity. (He was an assistant for the season preceding his ascent to head coach.)

Miller was born in Greensboro — the longtime home of the ACC Tournament — and attended North Carolina. He knows what it means to North Carolinians to develop a strong program, and he will almost certainly be given a chance by someone to show what he can do with high-major resources.

Wake Forest should be that school.

Wake can stick with Manning, or get unstuck. The choice for the Deacs is clear from where I sit.

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