Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey a candidate to fill Wake Forest opening, reports say

Wake Forest has parted ways with head basketball coach Danny Manning, the school confirmed Saturday, and national media reports say Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey is on the short list of candidates to replace him.

In six seasons, Manning went 78-111 and 30-80 in the ACC, never finishing better than 10th in the conference. The Demon Deacons lost in the first round of the ACC tournament in 2020.

Manning’s firing opens the door for several up-and-coming coaches in the mid-major nebulous. East Tennessee State’s Steve Forbes, UNC-Greensboro’s Wes Miller, UMBC’s Ryan Odom and Kelsey are among the names in the candidate pool, according to Stadium’s Jeff Goodman.

Kelsey’s candidacy is uniquely compelling. The Cincinnati native was an assistant coach at Wake Forest for eight seasons, from 2001-09. He worked under and looked up to legendary coach Skip Prosser, the last coach to bring Wake Forest an ACC regular-season championship before he unexpectedly died at age 56.

Kelsey then worked under Dino Gaudio at Wake Forest for two years before returning to Xavier, where Kelsey was a basketball player, to be an associate head coach.

He came to Winthrop in 2012.

Through his eight seasons at the helm of the Eagles’ program, Kelsey has won 163 games, enough for sixth all-time in the Big South and second-most in Winthrop history behind Gregg Marshall, who’s now at Wichita State.

He has been to five Big South title games (2013-17, 20), and he led his team to two NCAA Tournament bids — including one in 2020 before the end-of-year marquee event was canceled under unprecedented circumstances.

Kelsey’s connection to Wake Forest

Kelsey was present for what he once called Wake Forest’s “renaissance” of basketball in the early 2000s, and he is among a short list of available coaches who are connected to an era where Wake Forest was consistently good.

Other coaches on Prosser’s last staff included Gaudio, Prosser’s successor, and Chris Mack, who is now the head basketball coach at Louisville.

If Kelsey leaves, his new employer — or Kelsey himself — will be responsible for paying Winthrop a $225,000 buyout, according to a stipulation in his contract, which was obtained by The Herald via a FOIA request.

The contract runs through March 31, 2022. It was signed Nov. 8, 2017, five years into his Eagle tenure and a few months after Kelsey nearly left Winthrop for the head coaching job at UMass.

By “nearly,” Kelsey was less than an hour away from a press conference that would introduce him as the new coach at UMass before he called that college’s athletic director Ryan Bamford and backed out of the deal. Kelsey signed a memorandum of understanding with UMass, which is essentially an agreement to work toward the execution of a contract, The Herald reported. But he didn’t sign a contract with binding stipulations, nor did he submit a letter of resignation to Winthrop athletic director Ken Halpin.

“(At) the end of the day I just felt like in the best interest of my family and me, we wanted to be back here in Rock Hill,” Kelsey said in November 2017. “It just wasn’t the right situation for me.”

Ahead of the 2019-20 season, Kelsey hired former Wake Forest basketball star Justin Gray as an assistant coach — another connection to the Wake Forest basketball program’s most-recent successful era.

What Kelsey has learned from his mentor, Prosser

Prosser was an undeniably influential mentor for Kelsey. And some of the most important lessons Kelsey gleaned from Prosser were not directly about basketball at all.

As head coach in Rock Hill, Kelsey has worked diligently to market and improve the Winthrop basketball fan experience — a responsibility Prosser shouldered while at Wake Forest, and one the next coach in Winston-Salem will have to carry as well.

At Winthrop, Kelsey has continued a tradition started under head coach Gregg Marshall of providing unbridled access to the locker room for fans and kids after each home game. He has used his large following on social media, and has even descended upon campus during some weekdays, to try to improve attendance at games — which on average ranges from about 2,000 to 4,000 spectators.

“I coached under this guy, who might have been the best marketer in the history of college basketball, Skip Prosser,” Kelsey said in an interview with The Herald in November 2019, pointing to a painting in his office of him and Prosser.

Prosser, of course, ushered in Wake Forest’s “tie-dye nation.” He helped establish the tradition of the Demon Deacon riding out onto the court on a motorcycle before games. He made being a Wake Forest fan “cool,” Kelsey has said.

“Chris Mack, who’s the head coach at Louisville now, and I learned from him, because he allowed us autonomy and freedom to be creative at Wake Forest,” Kelsey said. “And to do stuff. And to think of new ways to engage the students; think of new ways to make the game more exciting.”

What else to know about Manning’s firing

▪ Manning’s firing comes at an odd time. The coronavirus pandemic has largely halted the college basketball coaching carousel. Logistically, it has been understandably difficult for searches to take place, but the pandemic has also flung the near future into economic uncertainty. Wake Forest athletic director John Currie’s decision to fire Manning comes at a cost of $18 million, per reports from Jeff Goodman in the 2018-19 season.

▪ Wake Forest is using Chad Chatlos of Ventura Partners to help with its coaching search, per 247sports.

▪ The Herald attempted to reach Kelsey and Winthrop AD Halpin on Saturday afternoon to no avail.

▪ When The Herald asked Kelsey about a Xavier coaching opening in 2018, he said: “My policy is to never discuss or talk about any other situation but the one I’m in, and those type of things are personal and are between my family and I. But I’d be happy and thrilled to talk about the job I have because it’s a phenomenal one and I’m really lucky to be the head coach at Winthrop.”

▪ In April 2019, when The Herald asked Halpin about the possibility of Kelsey leaving to go to Northern Kentucky, Halpin said he “never want(s) to comment on searches.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of the article incorrectly stated the number of wins Kelsey has accumulated at Winthrop. He has won 163 games as a coach in the Big South Conference.