The Juke Harris era at Wake Forest may be coming to an end. On April 3, the star guard announced via Instagram that he would declare for the NBA draft and enter the transfer portal. Harris averaged 21.4 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game in his sophomore year for the Demon Deacons.
“This was not an easy decision, but this option gives me the best opportunity to evaluate my professional future,” Harris wrote in his post.
Current draft projections have Harris as an early second or late first-round pick. Harris has until May 28 to decide if he will continue with the NBA draft process or withdraw his name to keep college eligibility. The last Demon Deacon to get drafted was Jake LaRavia, the 19th overall pick in 2022.
Per NCAA rules, a player may withdraw his name from the transfer portal at any time. So if Harris decides to withdraw his name from the NBA draft before the May 28 deadline, he may return to Wake Forest for his junior year. However, he is currently the third ranked player in the transfer portal per 247sports and is expected to draw significant interest from top-tier programs.
Head Coach Steve Forbes will have his hands full this offseason trying to replace a player of Harris’s caliber. The sophomore was the 16th leading scorer in the nation, the ACC’s Most Improved Player, and a member of the All-ACC Second-Team. Harris scored 750 points this season, which marked the second highest scoring season in Wake Forest history.
Harris is not the only player leaving the Demon Deacons following the conclusion of this season. Myles Colvin, Marqus Marion, Sebastian Akins, Cooper Schwieger, Jaylen Cross and Omaha Biliew also entered the transfer portal within the last week. Like Harris, they can always withdraw their names from the transfer portal and return to Winston-Salem.
After factoring in the graduates, only four highly touted players remain on Forbes’s team: guard Isaac Carr, guard Myles Colvin and twin four star forward recruits Gavin and Gallagher Placide. All four are expected to play heavy minutes next season.
A thousand players have already entered the transfer portal for Forbes to go after this offseason to rebuild his team, but projections indicate that Wake Forest has minimal NIL money to spend on their roster compared to other ACC programs.
If Forbes fails to build a tournament-worthy roster this year, his time as the head coach of this program may be up. However, the obvious question would still arise: Who would John Currie hire to replace him?
No matter what happens on the coaching front, next year’s roster will look very different from this year’s 18-17 squad that finished 13th in the ACC. With Harris’s departure, a new leader for this team will undoubtedly emerge. We will continue to cover men’s basketball on wfuogb.com as more offseason news becomes available.
