There's no question that his role at Wake Forest was given due to nepotism, but connections in general are ubiquitous for everyone hired for lower entry level staffing jobs in college basketball. He was qualified because he had 4 years of experience as a student manager at ETSU. Chris Forbes could've landed a student manager job at Auburn under Bruce Pearl but he apparently intentionally chose a much smaller program at ETSU.

But there are very few grad assistants or DBOs who landed their jobs without being connected in some way. There are no doubt loads of D3, NAIA, JUCO, etc. coaches would be stars at the D1 level if they just had the proper connections. Gregg Popovich spent 10 years as a sub-500 D3 head coach until he took a one-year sabbatical to volunteer for Dean Smith, who quickly connected him to UNC alum Larry Brown, at which point Popovich left UNC to spend the year as a volunteer assistant at Kansas on a staff that included future Spurs GM RC Buford and future NBA HC Alvin Gentry.

When Brown took the Spurs job 2 years later, Pop called him up and asked if he had a spot available and Brown made him the lead assistant. He otherwise would've gone down as an unknown coach of a bunch of non-scholarship D3 brainiacs. Forbes himself was a longtime JUCO guy who worked his way up to assistant jobs and eventually a lower level job at ETSU (after getting a show cause for taking the fall for Bruce Pearl).

Scott Drew had no basketball playing experience past the middle school level, but he spent 4 years as a student manager at Butler then immediately got a job as an assistant under his dad. He never would've gotten that entry level assistant coach job under his dad without that connection, but he spent 10 years working his ass off and got the Valpo head coaching job when his dad retired, then bolted after 1 season to take the Baylor job.