Former Tennessee basketball assistants under Bruce Peal land big jobs

Former Tennessee basketball assistants Jason Shay and Steve Forbes have moved on from their Volunteers days and landed big head coaching jobs.

When Tennessee basketball fired Bruce Pearl in 2011 and then he received his show-cause penalty, it separated Pearl from a group of elite assistant coaches who had been with him since at least 2006. Now, two of those coaches are taking on new roles this year.

Steve Forbes the high-profile assistant Pearl lured away from the Texas A&M Aggies in just his second year on the job in Knoxville, has just accepted the head coaching position with the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. He replaces Danny Manning.

Over the past five years, Forbes has been head coach of the ETSU Buccaneers, making the NCAA Tournament in 2017 and earning a berth in 2019 before COVID-19 canceled everything. After Pearl was initially fired in 2011, he went to Northwest Florida State Junior College and was head coach there for two years, becoming NJCAA National Runner-Up two years in a row.

After that, Forbes spent two years as an assistant under Gregg Marshall with the Wichita State Shockers before earning the ETSU job. So Forbes has coached under Pearl and Marshall while winning in his own right, earning the Wake Forest gig.

Replacing Forbes at ETSU, though, is another former Tennessee basketball assistant under Pearl, Jason Shay. Unlike Forbes, who had built a name on his own, Shay was almost completely a Pearl protege. He played for the Iowa Hawkeyes when Pearl was an assistant there, and he got his start in coaching under Pearl when Pearl was head coach of the Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers.

Shay followed Pearl to Knoxville and was with him all six years there. After Pearl was fired, Shay followed Forbes to Northwest Florida State. When Forbes went to Wichita State, Shay spent two years as an assistant with the North Dakota Fighting Hawks, but he joined Forbes’ staff at ETSU and was an assistant all five years Forbes was there.

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As a result, Shay was the logical choice to replace Forbes when Forbes took the Wake Forest job. Simply put, after the firing of Pearl, these guys had major setbacks in their careers, but both of them have managed to land head coaching jobs nearly a decade later now, with one of them at a Power Five program.

Another former Pearl assistant, Tony Jones, was also with him all six years on Rocky Top, and he actually served as Tennessee basketball’s interim head coach when Pearl was suspended in 2010-2011. Jones, like Shay, was with Pearl all four years in Milwaukee as well.

Unlike Shay and Forbes, though, Jones went the high school route when Pearl was fired, spending two years as head coach of Alcoa. He then went back to Pearl’s staff as an assistant his first year with the Auburn Tigers in 2014-2015, but he then resigned to join the Windsor Express, apparently trying to make it at the pro level.

However, after one year, Jones went back to college, and he is now an assistant with the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, where just completed his third year. If Jones can land a head coaching job somewhere, Pearl’s top three assistants during his run with Tennessee basketball will have all made it to that level, improving his coaching tree. Shay and Forbes are already there.