After pausing team activities back on Nov. 30 due to COVID-19, Wake Forest basketball will return to the practice floor this weekend. Wake Forest won’t play it’s next game until Dec. 30 against Syracuse — 33 days after the teams 11-point win over Longwood (Nov. 27).
It’s been a tough, arduous process for the players and program. On Wednesday, first-year head coach Steve Forbes joined Adam Gold on The Adam Gold Show (statewide in North Carolina) to give an update on the state of his program.
At the outset of the interview, Forbes stated that his priority is his players, which he’s been in communication with on a daily basis.: “First and foremost, making sure that our players are safe and healthy.
Without going into specifics, Forbes was candid in his assessment of what the last 3-4 weeks have been like for Wake Forest basketball. After five months of no positive tests, “it spread like a wildfire,” Forbes described to Gold. “It kept coming and coming; it didn’t stop.” Forbes described feeling overwhelmed at times since COVID-19 hit the program; basketball quickly became a secondary item.
According to Forbes, no one on the team was asymptomatic.
Forbes also addressed his concerns with the overall mental health of his players, which is something Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski brought up last week, too. There’s no social time for the players; it’s a challenge to generate team-building experiences. After practice, according to Forbes, players leave, grab a meal to go and go back to their rooms, alone.
The full interview can be heard here:
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