Bucky McMillan cites Nate Oats among coaches he studied

In April, Texas A&M hired the former Samford head coach Bucky McMillan after Buzz Williams left the program to take over at Maryland. Now, Aggies fans are excited to see McMillan bring “Bucky Ball” to College Station.

But, what is Bucky Ball and where did it come from? During an interview with CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, McMillan revealed which coaches influenced his fast-paced style of play.

“I played for a great college coach in Duane Reboul, who was the coach of Birmingham Southern; they were in the Big South at the time,” McMillan said. “He went to an NAIA national championship before that, and he was kind of the same way — early 3-point shooting before it was popular, spacing the floor. And so, studied him a lot.

“There’s some college coaches — now, they’re my competitors — I can’t say too much about. I can’t hurt myself in the recruiting game. There’s some guys that are friends within the business. One of them had a similar route to me. Nate at Alabama, I’ll go ahead and say it. And so, I’ve watched them analytically. We were kind of into the analytics before the analytics were the analytics.”

McMillan, like so many of his contemporaries, is embracing the analytic side of basketball. The analytics encourage teams to get up shots early in the shot clock and take plenty of 3-pointers. McMillan adhered to both of these tenets at Samford.

Last season, Samford averaged 82.9 points per game, the 14th-most in the country. Moreover, the Bulldogs attempted 63.8 field-goal attempts and 29.6 3-point attempts per game, both of which ranked 11th in college basketball.

Bucky McMillan not only has his teams play with a frenetic pace on offense, but on defense as well. McMillan’s teams endlessly press their opponents.

In turn, Samford ranked in the top 20 in the country for opponent turnover percentage the past two seasons. Now, McMillan is ready to test his style against the best teams in the country.

“When I was coaching high school basketball in Alabama back in the day, all the coaches in the suburban schools they played in the 30s and 40s,” McMillan told Rothstein. “Really slow, ran the flex, no shot clock, shoot it after a minute and I was committed to, if I coached, I would never do that.

“We were going to trap until they shot the ball, shoot as quickly as possible, take a lot of 3’s and so a lot of old-school coaches in the area use to say that as a negative, like it wasn’t disciplined if you played fast and shoot threes. We started winning a lot and it became known as a positive in the community where I lived in. Basically, up-tempo basketball and shoot a lot of 3’s.”