Forbes excited to return 'home' for Emerald Coast Classic

NICEVILLE —The Emerald Coast Classic, one of the area’s top sporting events, returns after a two-year absence this Thanksgiving weekend, providing fans along Florida’s Emerald Coast a look at college basketball teams that hope to make their presence known in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.

The semifinal round games on Friday will feature LSU playing Penn State at 6 p.m, followed by Oregon State facing Wake Forest at 8:30 p.m. The championship game on Saturday will tip off at 6 p.m. at Raider Arena with the third-place game set for 3 p.m.

Both LSU and Wake Forest are undefeated entering the weekend tournament, sporting 5-0 records.

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes, who served as head coach at Northwest Florida State College from 2011-13, guiding the Raiders to a 62-6 record.

“It will be a special time for me getting to go back to Northwest Florida State,” said the personable Forbes. “That place means a lot to me.”

Wake Forest has outscored its five opponents by an average of 24 points and the Deacons are one of only three unbeaten ACC teams. The other two are No. 5 Duke and Virginia Tech. The Deacons open their ACC schedule against the Hokies on Dec. 4 in Blacksburg, Va.

“This is three-phase nonconference schedule for us,” Forbes added. “Phase one is over, going 5-0. Now we start phase two…We’re very aware of what’s coming…we’ve gotten better every game. We’re excited to play Oregon State. We need this and we’re ready for it.”

Forbes is a longtime friend of tournament director Maury Hanks who first seeded the idea of holding the tournament in Niceville.

"When he (Forbes) got the job, he called me and he said, 'You know, you really need to come down and see this place. We've got a great arena. We've got a great location, great beaches, great hospitality. I think you could do something here,'" Hanks said.

After visiting, Hanks said he agreed.

"There's four games a day. The two earliest games each day are free; we don't charge admission to those," Hanks said. "For the two later games each day, tickets start as low as $15. My saying is, it's cheaper to see two high-level division one basketball games than it is to go to a movie."

LSU is seeking its third straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament, and Oregon State was the Cinderella story of the 2021 NCAA Tournament after advancing to the Elite Eight. Penn State captured the 2018 NIT championship.

In addition to the prime time matchups, the Emerald Coast Classic will feature an afternoon session on Friday as well as a Saturday morning session involving McNeese, North Carolina A&T, Samford and St. Francis Brooklyn.

Friday Schedule

11 a.m. – McNeese State vs. St. Francis Brooklyn

1:30 p.m. —Samford vs. North Carolina A&T

6 p.m. — Penn State vs. LSU

8:30 p.m. — Oregon State vs. Wake Forest

Saturday Schedule

10 a.m. — Seventh-Place game

12:30 p.m. — Fifth-Place game

3 p.m. —Loser of Penn State/LSU vs. loser of Oregon State/Wake Forest

6 p.m. — Championship: winner of Penn State/LSU vs. winner of Oregon State/Wake Forest

LSU has a combined 39 SEC wins over the past three season— the most in the conference during that span. The Tigers are the only team to finish in the top four in the SEC in each of the last three seasons.

Yes, the Tigers have established themselves as a perennial SEC contender under coach Will Wade.

“We have the pieces to be a contender and continue to be in that top four,” said Wade as the Tigers eye another return trip to the NCAA Tournament. “I think we’ve assembled another roster that can do that.”

"We've got to be better,” added Wade. “We've won a lot of games, we've won the SEC, we've done a lot of stuff here. We have been terrible in these early season tournaments. We've got to go there (Emerald Coast Classic) on a mission on purpose to win the thing and to win the thing, you've got to win the first one. We've got to put everything we got into Friday against Penn State, a good team from the Big Ten. They'll have athletes and bodies that look like ours. We've got to be better in these environments and we haven't been. We've got to get that thing changed starting on Friday."

After 6-7 junior forward Darius Days, who is considered the top shooter in the SEC, withdrew from the NBA draft it gave LSU a roster that can compete for the SEC championship. Days is the team’s top returning scorer (11.6 ppg) and rebounder (7.8 rpg), while providing both veteran leadership and a potential inside-outside threat with a 40.0 shooting percentage beyond the arc.

Oregon State had a 14-12 record before winning the Pac-12 Conference tournament in Las Vegas and making their historic NCAA Tournament run. Oregon State, which had not won an NCAA Tournament game since 1982 before notching three wins in the 2021 bracket, has the pieces to make the NCAA field again as an at-large section.

Six of the top eight scorers from the remarkable Pac-12 and NCAA Tournament are back. Oregon State returns three starters including potential Pac-12 breakout star Warith Alatishe, a 6-7 senior forward who was fourth in the Pac-12 with 46 blocks while shooting 50.9 percent from the floor. He averaged 9.9 points and 8.6 rebounds.

Between his offensive acumen and experience with the likes of Brad Stevens and Matt Painter, don’t be surprised if first year head coach Micah Shrewsberry leads Penn State to a surprising finish in the Big Ten Conference.

Success will be defined by how quickly everyone picks up the style of Shrewsberry who lured Siena’s Jalen Pickett and Western Michigan’s Greg Lee to supplement holdovers John Harrar and Seth Lundy.

Harrar, a 6-9 forward, returns for his fifth season after leading the Big Ten with a 3.8 offensive rebounds last year. Lundy, a 6-6, sophomore forward, is Penn State’s leading returning scorer (10.1 ppg) and is poised for a breakout season. Harrar and Lundy anchor the middle for Penn State, which led the Big Ten last season in offensive rebounds (12.3)

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Wake Forest men's basketball coach Steve Forbes excited to return 'home' for Emerald Coast Classic at NWF State College