{"id":27398,"date":"2025-10-30T06:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T06:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/27398\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T06:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T06:28:15","slug":"bucky-mcmillan-rose-from-high-school-to-texas-am-in-5-years-will-bucky-ball-work-in-the-sec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/27398\/","title":{"rendered":"Bucky McMillan rose from high school to Texas A&M in 5 years. Will \u2018Bucky Ball\u2019 work in the SEC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLLEGE STATION, Texas \u2014 Just about everyone Bucky McMillan has met in the six months since he was named the coach at Texas A&M has asked him some version of the same question.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are y\u2019all going to play?\u201d<\/p>\n

What everyone is really wondering is whether they will play Bucky Ball.<\/p>\n

McMillan knows his team\u2019s style of play invites skepticism despite the results. \u201cBucky Ball,\u201d a relentless, full-court pressing, fast-paced style, became synonymous with his name when he was winning five state titles as a high school coach in Alabama. Its cult status grew as he flipped Samford from one of the worst teams in the Southern Conference to a conference champ.<\/p>\n

Bucky Ball has become his brand, but originally, it was a term coaches in Alabama used to criticize any team that played disorganized and recklessly.<\/p>\n

Oh, they just play Bucky Ball.<\/p>\n

No one questions conformity. At the high-major level, it\u2019s rare to find any teams that lean heavily on a full-court press. Poll coaches, and you\u2019ll get some explanation of why it won\u2019t work: The guards are too good; it\u2019s a risk to tire out your best players; or nearly everyone at that level can handle the ball.<\/p>\n

The thing is, where he\u2019s from, no one needs convincing anymore. His whole basketball career until this point \u2014 as a player and coach \u2014 took place in a 15-mile radius in Birmingham, Ala., where McMillan was\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cA legend,\u201d said former Mountain Brook High guard Colby Jones, now with the Detroit Pistons. \u201cHe kind of set the blueprint for people to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in, the best teams in that area now press, play fast and shoot 3-pointers. McMillan even created his own AAU program \u2014 the Alabama Flyers \u2014 with teams starting in the second grade, teaching them how to play Bucky Ball so they had been in the system for 10 years by the time they were high school seniors.<\/p>\n

Bucky Ball is a religion in Birmingham, Ala.<\/p>\n

But can it work in the SEC?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Texas A&M hired Bucky McMillan in April to replace Buzz Williams. Jack Gorman \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

McMillan has lived his entire basketball life with people saying, \u201cNo way you\u2019ll be able to do that,\u201d and him firing back, \u201cWatch me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He grew up in an affluent neighborhood of Birmingham. His dream was to play Division I basketball. He was told that no one from his area played DI. Plus, he was too short with no hope of growing. His dad was 5-foot-8; his mom was 5-3.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat really bothered me,\u201d McMillan said. \u201cThat really pissed me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

So McMillan quit every sport but basketball when he was in sixth grade. And convinced sleeping would help him grow, he made sure he slept eight hours every night. He grew to 6-3 and was an all-state point guard at Mountain Brook High. He walked on at Birmingham Southern, a Division I basketball program at the time. After redshirting as a freshman, he played 83 games the next three seasons and started every one, earning a scholarship along the way.<\/p>\n

While in high school in the early 2000s, McMillan played for a coach who played slow. Everyone in his area did. The belief was that it was the only way to win in suburban basketball. It was boring to play, to play against, and to watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were coach,\u201d McMillan said of his mindset back then, \u201cI\u2019m gonna do the opposite of this to show that this isn\u2019t it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan started coaching youth teams in high school and college. His teams pressed, played up-tempo and played to the analytics before that became mainstream \u2014 shooting mostly 3s and layups. In 2005, between his redshirt sophomore and junior seasons at Birmingham Southern, he took a group of undersized kids from the area and finished sixth in the under-17 division at AAU Nationals in Orlando. A year later Birmingham Southern\u2019s program went on hiatus for the 2006-07 season while transitioning from DI to DIII. McMillan had offers to transfer to several high-majors, but he\u2019d already proven he could play DI basketball. So he took a job as the junior varsity coach at his alma mater.<\/p>\n

Playing Bucky Ball, his team went 36-6 in two years. When the varsity job opened in 2008, the parents of players who had played for him wrote letters to the school asking them to hire McMillan. Coaches in the area were skeptical his style would work at the varsity level.<\/p>\n

\u201cMountain Brook might be perceived as a bunch of three-car garage homes, but the perception gets lost that these might not be tough kids,\u201d McMillan told The Birmingham News back in 2010. \u201cThis group stems from a group of parents who are very tough and their kids play ball all year round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those kids from the suburbs won the school\u2019s first state title in 2013, repeated in 2014 and won back-to-back-to-back state titles from 2017 through 2019. In seven of eight years, Mountain Brook played in the state championship game.<\/p>\n

In the season after his first state title, Mountain Brook played in a tournament on Samford\u2019s campus. Martin Newton, Samford\u2019s athletic director, was there to watch and witnessed Bucky Ball for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe took this group of guys that, with the exception of maybe one or two players, didn\u2019t even look like they belonged on the court, and they were just running people out of the gym,\u201d Newton remembered. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going, oh my gosh, this reminds me of a young Rick Pitino.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newton was familiar with Pitino. His father, C.M. Newton, hired him in 1989 to restore Kentucky\u2019s program after it\u2019d been hit with a two-year NCAA Tournament ban for recruiting and academic violations.<\/p>\n

Pitino had just eight scholarship players and didn\u2019t have the best athletes, but he willed that group into a winner, using a full-court press that wore opponents down because his teams were better conditioned than anyone else. In the first year UK was eligible to return to the NCAA Tournament \u2014 Pitino\u2019s third year \u2014 the Cats made the Elite Eight, losing to Duke in one of the most iconic NCAA Tournament games of all time. Three years later, he\u2019d win a national title.<\/p>\n

McMillan grew up watching those teams and idolizing Pitino because of his willingness to be different. Newton kept his eyes on McMillan. He had a friend with a daughter who played at Mountain Brook, and he\u2019d often go to watch her games and stick around to watch the boys\u2019 games. McMillan\u2019s brand of basketball was not just fun to watch; he made it fun to be a part of it by making neon Bucky Ball shirts that kids would wear to games.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the community that would attend their games just raved about him,\u201d Newton said. \u201cHe was a cult-like figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We just want to win in the most fun way possible.”<\/p>\n

New @aggiembk<\/a> head coach Bucky McMillan explains what “Bucky Ball” is all about: pic.twitter.com\/u7uV6b1gBr<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) April 9, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2021, after Samford had a losing season for the seventh time in nine seasons with Newton as the AD, Newton decided he was finished hiring assistant coaches; he wanted a head coach.<\/p>\n

He made the unorthodox decision to hire a high school coach.<\/p>\n

McMillan always believed he could be a college coach, but he had no interest in the journey \u2014 starting at the bottom of a college coaching staff and working his way up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to spend the 40 years to do it and say, \u2018I told you I could do it.\u2019 Where the hell did my life go?\u201d he said. \u201cBut I said if someone wanted to cut that journey significantly short, I\u2019d be all ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samford had never had a winning record in the Southern Conference since joining in 2009. In McMillan\u2019s second year in 2022, the Bulldogs got there. Then they won back-to-back league titles and ended a 24-year NCAA Tournament drought in 2024, nearly upsetting Kansas with that pesky press.<\/p>\n

Why McMillan won was a lot like Pitino. It\u2019s not just the press; it\u2019s the ability to convince players to play as hard as they possibly can.<\/p>\n

Last season, Samford trailed by double digits in the second half in four games it went on to win. In each, it had a win probability under 10 percent, per KenPom, including just a 1 percent chance in a game against North Dakota State when it trailed by 14 with 3:02 left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to pick you up full court and be relentless for 94 feet for 40 minutes,\u201d said Rylan Jones, Samford\u2019s starting point guard the last two seasons. \u201cEventually the other team just got tired, would give in, was not as well-conditioned as us and that\u2019s what would allow us to have our second half runs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Samford hadn\u2019t been to the NCAA Tournament in more than two decades, but made it in 2024 \u2014 and nearly upset Kansas as a No. 13 seed. Christian Petersen \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Brad Stevens quote, from back in his Butler days, that McMillan loves: \u201cWe\u2019re ordinary people doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will ask, \u2018Why don\u2019t more teams play this way or that way?\u2019 I hope everyone actually does try to play how we play,\u201d McMillan said. \u201cIt\u2019d give us an advantage. We know the details of what matters and what doesn\u2019t matter and how to correct it, right? The details in anything you do defines how good you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan\u2019s practices at Texas A&M do not look any different from his days at Mountain Brook. The players might be taller and faster, but he has the same slogan on the wall \u2014 \u201cHardworking. Unselfish. Fearless.\u201d \u2014 and he\u2019s stuck with a philosophy of building the mental and physical stamina of his teams by making the practices harder than the games.<\/p>\n

After some shooting drills during a late-September practice, the Aggies start a two-on-one drill where a second defender runs onto the floor from the sideline after the offense crosses half court. Once the offense scores or loses the ball, the defenders become the offense and the original offensive players must now guard and try to steal the ball back, guarding until half court. On the other side, another defender waits to run on if the ball crosses midcourt.<\/p>\n

Eventually, it\u2019s the same drill but three-on-two, then four-on-three, then five-on-four.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be exhausting, like all the pressing and all the running around,\u201d A&M senior guard Rylan Griffen said. \u201cSometimes it\u2019d be feeling like we got the zoomies out there just running. I got a dog, so I see him running back and forth all the time. That\u2019s kind of how we be playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes Bucky Ball different from most presses is that his teams even press off a miss. The only other team that does that, McMillan said, is Nova Southeastern, which has won two of the last three Division II national titles and is coached by Jim Crutchfield, a former tennis coach who was also inspired by Pitino and has won a higher percentage of his games than any college coach ever.<\/p>\n

Crutchfield times his players out of a trap to half court, using math to show them how hard they\u2019re capable of playing. And at one point during Texas A&M\u2019s practice, a turnover occurs and the guilty team hesitates a half second. McMillan stops practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery second is 20 feet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Ten pushups.<\/p>\n

What makes Bucky Ball so effective is the combination of effort and feel in the press, knowing when and where to trap. At Mountain Brook, the players were in the system for so long that they developed that feel. And at the high school and the mid-major level, the consensus is that it\u2019s easier to convince those players to expend the effort it takes.<\/p>\n

The press worked in the SEC in the 1990s, for both Pitino and Nolan Richardson at Arkansas, who won the 1994 national title with his \u201c40 minutes of Hell\u201d version. Pitino still presses at St. John\u2019s, but not nearly as much (13.9 percent of the time last season, per Synergy, compared to 41.9 percent for Samford).<\/p>\n

The sport has changed a lot since even Pitino\u2019s Louisville days, when players rarely transferred. Player movement can impact style of play choices. McMillan has 14 players who have never played for him before.<\/p>\n

But his superpower might be in his ability to convince others his way is the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n McMillan\u2019s practices at Texas A&M do not look any different from his days at Mountain Brook High. Christian Petersen \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

McMillan was told this one from Mark McCaleb, another former high school coach in Alabama who liked to press.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is a beautiful game. One team got the ball, they come down the floor, they\u2019d shoot, and if they\u2019d score, the whole bleachers on that one side would stand up and cheer. Then the other team would get the ball, they\u2019d come down the court, they\u2019d shoot, then if they scored, the whole bleachers on the other side would all stand up together and cheer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then some son of a b\u2014 started pressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great punchline, but McMillan has found it to be true. \u201cCoaches used to shake my hand like we\u2019d cheated when we beat them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were supposed to come down, it was our turn to play offense and then your turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most coaches focus on three phases of the game: half-court offense, half-court defense and transition offense. McMillan talks often about four phases, the fourth being full-court defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe talked about that one the most,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

McMillan had the advantage of coaching at levels where he could test his theories, and he became even more convinced when he learned to play poker his senior year of high school.<\/p>\n

There are two types of successful poker players. One will patiently grind, looking for small edges. Then there\u2019s the aggressive player, who is constantly forcing opponents into mistakes. McMillan was the latter, and he was good. In 2006, he finished 177th out of 8,773 entrants in the World Series of Poker, earning $47,006 in winnings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why I was good at poker was because I was mentally strong and had a thinking personality that I got from playing sports,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd one of the reasons I became a good coach was because of poker, because I learned to not be results-oriented and just focus on what you can control.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan\u2019s tangent on poker comes during an 11 1\/2-minute answer on when he first started pressing and why. This is what it\u2019s like to be in his presence. The conversation is always flowing, and his mind is always working.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have these fights in my head all day long,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just comes out when I talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

And by the time he\u2019s finished, you\u2019re wondering, why doesn\u2019t everyone play Bucky Ball?<\/p>\n

Other stylistically similar coaches adjusted when they made the jump from mid- to high-major. When Shaka Smart left VCU for Texas, for instance, he left behind the \u201cHavoc\u201d defense that fueled VCU\u2019s Cinderella Final Four run in 2011.<\/p>\n

McMillan pushes back that his style cannot work at the high-major level. This summer, he watched the Indiana Pacers use a full-court press in the NBA playoffs and make the finals.<\/p>\n

Bucky Ball is more than the press, too. He uses multiple zone defenses, sometimes switching mid-possession into a man-to-man. He also has different versions of his press.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just what everybody thinks, that we just gamble and give up layups. \u201cIt\u2019s more than that,\u201d said assistant coach Mitch Cole, who coached McMillan in college and left a head job at Barry College to join him at Samford. \u201cHe\u2019s back there playing chess on defense. Most people manipulate the game on offense; Bucky\u2019s trying to manipulate it on defense, making you uncomfortable, making you do things you don\u2019t want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan knows it\u2019s not exclusively style that wins. When it gets to the postseason, he believes every system is neutralized. \u201cMost of the time the best players are going to end up winning the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another reason he believes Bucky Ball will work. He is convinced his system aligns with attracting the best personnel, because it mirrors the NBA in pace and his analytical approach to offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very statistical when he presents his case,\u201d said Mackenzie Mgbako, a former five-star recruit who transferred from Indiana to Texas A&M. \u201cThe numbers don\u2019t lie. He showed me stats from other colleges around the country, and how his way of playing stacked up against other people\u2019s. Those numbers spoke for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan admits there are other ways to win, and sure, he could try to play more like everyone else in the SEC.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s the fun in playing safe?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got total respect for these guys who have done it in other ways \u2014 close to the vest, grind it out,\u201d he said. \u201cI just don\u2019t want to live my life like that, if that makes sense to you. That just doesn\u2019t go with my overall plan for life. I don\u2019t know how long I\u2019m gonna live, but like I don\u2019t wanna go to the grave saying, yeah I grew my 401K every year and I lived close to the vest and we were conservative and we didn\u2019t beat ourselves. Screw that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can live with losing. I just can\u2019t live with not trying to win.\u201d<\/p>\n