Texas A&M hires Samford head coach Bucky McMillan

Per multiple sources, Samford men’s basketball head coach Bucky McMillan has been named the next coach at Texas A&M. He will replace former Aggie coach Buzz Williams, who left for Maryland.

McMillan, 41, was hired by Samford on April 6, 2020 and has amassed a 99-52 record over five years in Homewood. Samford had posted just two winning records over the 14 seasons preceding McMillan’s arrival. After a 6-13 debut campaign marred by COVID-19, McMillan led the Bulldogs to four consecutive seasons of 20 or more wins, earning three Southern Conference Coach of the Year awards for his efforts.

During McMillan’s tenure, Samford won shares of the 2023 and 2024 SoCon regular season championships. The Bulldogs also won the 2024 SoCon tournament, a victory that clinched the program’s third-ever March Madness bid. Although Samford was eliminated in the first round by Kansas after finding itself on the wrong end of a controversial call, the Bulldogs concluded the season boasting a program-record 29 wins.

A Birmingham native, McMillan played basketball at Mountain Brook High School, helping the program to its first AHSAA final four appearance in 2001. He continued his playing career at Birmingham-Southern, from where he coached Mountain Brook youth teams and became Mountain Brook’s junior varsity coach following his 2006 college graduation. By 2008, McMillan had been named Mountain Brook’s varsity coach, a position he would retain until 2020.

McMillan quickly transformed the Spartans into the state’s premier high school basketball program. During his 13 years at Mountain Brook, he posted a 333–74 overall record, brought home five state championship trophies, and coached future NBA players Trendon Watford and Colby Jones. In 2018, he was named boys basketball coach of the year by the National High School Coaches Association after Mountain Brook went 31-3 with a win over high school national champion IMG Academy.

Much of McMillan’s success can be attributed to ‘Bucky Ball,’ his exciting, idiosyncratic style of basketball. It emphasizes whirlwind tempo, efficient shot selection—particularly three-point shooting—and the full-court press. McMillan-coached teams often overwhelm opponents with sheer depth and constant substitutions; last season, ten different Bulldogs averaged double-digit minutes.

“Play fast, play defense and give it 100 percent or get the hell out,” Bucky McMillan Sr., the coach’s father, told The Athletic last year. “That’s Bucky Ball, and you can’t beat it.”

Questions about the scalability of Bucky Ball will follow McMillan to Texas A&M and the SEC. The 2023-2024 Bulldogs won 29 games with a roster that ranked nearly last in Division I in average height. Their height deficiency was so pronounced that McMillan poked fun at it, sending 5’8″ point guard Dallas Graziani to tip off against 7′4″ Purdue center Zach Edey to open the season.

McMillan’s system overcame this athletic disadvantage in large part by preying on bad decision-making, its sky-high tempo forcing opposing players to make choices at rates they were uncomfortable with.

“The style is fun-style,” Kansas coach Bill Self said before facing off against Samford during the 2024 NCAA Tournament. “There’s pressure all the time. It’s a style that you don’t have to play perfect. But you have to play athletic and quick to create havoc and force teams to make plays maybe at a pace that they’re not as accustomed to making plays to.”

However, it is yet unclear how effectively this style will translate to a conference where the average quality of athlete is significantly higher than it is in the SoCon.

But similar questions arose when Samford originally hired McMillan, then possessing no experience on a DI staff, from Mountain Brook.

“Hiring high school coaches directly without them serving as an apprenticeship as an assistant in college is risky,” sportswriter Marky Billson wrote in April 2020. “What’s more, it’s townie. It’s thinking that high school basketball is equal to Division I college basketball.”

“Pretty good for a high school coach,” the Samford men’s basketball Twitter account posted three conference championships later.