A year ago this time we were writing about one of the least changed rosters in a deep sea of roster overhauls. The Texas A&M Aggies, reaching their apex under Buzz Williams, were poised to bring back more
starts, more points, more minutes played, and more players, than nearly every other roster — not just in the SEC — but in all of college basketball. And they did this two years running.
Returning more production than anyone has its plusses, but it also has some draw backs. Texas A&M had three successive finishes in KenPom.com’s final rankings of 33, 33, and 35 going into last year. Their SEC finishes were 9-9, 15-3, and 9-9.
The Aggies used the SECs deep pool of quality teams to have their best season analytically, even if they ended up just a few wins more in league play than their baseline. But the lineup and roster cohesiveness helped the Aggies overcoming in games late and close, and pushed them into a 5 seed.
Then the coaching carousel reared its head and sucked Williams up into it leaving behind six years of solid if unspectacular results. He was going to have a big roster reset ahead of him with 5 of the top 6 players graduating out, so why not doing it at Maryland?
So what’s next for the Texas A&M Aggies?
Previous SEC Previews:
- 12. Oklahoma Sooners, 8-10
- 13. Ole Miss Rebels, 7-11
- 14. Georgia Bulldogs, 6-12
- 15. South Carolina Gamecocks, 4-14
- 16. LSU Tigers, 3-15
Texas A&M Aggies
- Last season: 23 – 11 (11-7 in conference) #18
- The Masses Prediction: 10th in conference, 8.0 – 10.0
- SEC Media Pick: 13th
- Analytics Average: 12th in conference, 37th overall
HEAD COACH: Bucky McMillan | 1st Season, 0-0
Going from Buzz to Bucky is one kind of move. It’s an easy joke to make, but Buzz Williams had a very Buzz Williams like tenure in College Station. He’s never stayed at any coaching job longer than 6 seasons, and clearly picked this time to move onto the job at Maryland. The Aggies were good under Buzz, making the NCAA Tournament each of the last three years, but there was a big reset coming as most of his production was leaving after playing their last year under the existing NCAA Eligibility rules.
Enter Bucky McMillan. A Birhimgham, Alabama native, McMillan coached his alma mater Mountain Brook High School to unprecedented success before making the jump from high school to Division 1 basketball at Samford. The Samford Bulldogs, also located in Birmingham, AL, had a long proud history of success over 53 seasons of D1 basketball. But the program had fallen on some tough times since leaving the Atlantic Sun Conference for the Southern Conference. Samford had just one 20 win season over the last 20 years, and hadn’t seen the NCAA Tournament since the year 2000.
McMillan changed that. After a rough first season (he went 6-13 in the COVID shortened year), McMillan won 21 games in back to back years for the first time since 1999 and 2000. Then in 2024 the Bulldogs made a leap winning 29 games, earning a 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and nearly upsetting Kansas in the first round.
Last year was another good season, but McMillan opted to leave Birmingham for the first time and see about the job in College Station, Texas.
It’s really be a solid run the last four years. A&M would have had four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament had Williams scheduled anyone in his non-conference that first year. But he did build up from a recent rough skid.
Maybe there’s a bit of a question about what the ceiling is on the program, they’ve made making the NCAA Tournament the baseline with multiple coaches. It’s a good question if McMillan can raise that expectation a bit.
LOST PRODUCTION
16th in % minutes, 99.34% | 16th in % points, 99.65% | 16th in % possessions, 99.55%
It’ll be weird for SEC Basketball fans to watch a Texas A&M game without Wade Taylor IV on the floor, or Andersson Garcia, or Henry Coleman. Heading into last season no team had a roster with more college games played, and no team had more returning games played than A&M last season. But all those players are gone, including non-Seniors Pharrel Payne, Solomon Washington, George Turkson, and Andre Mills, all who followed Buzz to Maryland.
Now the only returning player to the roster is Chris McDermott, a 6’7 walk on from Houston who saw action in 7 games.
This is the way things are now, a new coach enters and begins a full roster overhaul.
Needing to fill out roster spots, McMillan focused early on what he knew, and what was available. By going after south Texas natives and even Josh Holloway, a Samford transfer. Holloway spent his first two years playing for McMillan and went from 12.7 minutes per game as a freshman to 23.0 minutes as a sophomore, including 11 starts.
Zach Clemence was one of the first commitments as a San Antonio native and former 4-star recruit who struggled to crack the rotation for Bill Self at Kansas. Jamie Vinson spent his freshman year at Texas and is an Austin native making the move to play for the Aggies. Jacari Lane, a North Alabama transfer, is familiar with McMillan as both are from Alabama faced off against each other the last two years. Then Rylan Griffen came back home, of sorts, he’s a native of Dallas.
Griffen was a fixture for Alabama two years ago, but struggled to find a similar role at Kansas. The free flowing offense and faster pace should suit him well. Lane was a top level scorer in the Atlantic Sun last year, his scoring will be an important addition.
With a lot of the roles filled out, McMillan needed to land some interior defense, and some top line scoring pop. He got the second, quite literally, when Pop Isaacs decommitted from Houston — following Milos Uzan’s return from the NBA Draft — and pledged to the Aggies. Isaacs sat out most of last year with a lower leg injury, but when healthy he’s a scoring leader. He averaged 16.3 points in limited action last year, and 15.8 points the year before at Texas Tech. To help with the interior defense the Aggies signed Federiko Federiko, a 6’11 shot blocking center who patrolled the middle of the Texas Tech defense last year.
The last two pieces were Mackenzie Mgbako, a former 5-star wing who never quite fulfilled his potential at Indiana, and Rashaun Agee, a versatile forward who played last year at USC.
It’s hard to believe but this is the first time I’ll mention “Bucky Ball”, the stye of basketball coined after the head coach. Bucky Ball plays fast offensively, and pressures full court on defense. Samford was top 25 in tempo last year, and top 10 the year before that. It’s worth mentioning in this section because how they play will affect rotations.
Samford has played with a deep rotation, it’s been since his second season the last time a player averaged over 30 minutes per game.
But this doesn’t look like a particularly deep rotation. The quality at the top is good. You’ve got a good scoring point guard, and a couple mid major guards to back him up. Griffen and Mgbako are reclamation projects to a degree, but both have proven to be productive. Plus Ruben Dominguez is an international prospect who popped late over the summer and could factor into the rotation.
This looks like a good quality seven or eight man rotation before things begin to turn into a question mark.
This is a pretty interesting, but not altogether difficult, non-conference schedule. There is a healthy amount of upper quadrant level games but there isn’t a game on the schedule this team can’t win. Most of the analytics services have the Aggies inside the top 50, but a top 50 level team should be able to go on the road and beat another top 50 level team. There isn’t a top 10 or 15 type opponent, just a lot of lower level Quad 1 types.
Oklahoma State on the road early might be a challenge, but the Cowboys have only had one winning record in the Big 12 since the 2013 season. That’s a game you should be able to win. Florida State is rebuilding, and Pittsburgh has been mediocre in the Jeff Capel era. The toughest game might be SMU, in a neutral-road type environment, the Mustangs were the victims of a soft non-conference slate and a weak ACC. But they still won 24 games last year. Ironically they lost to Oklahoma State in the NIT.
THE RULING
Will Bucky let Bucky Ball go wild?
It’s typically been harder to rely on heavy full court pressure as you move up the chain. There are teams who still throw presses at you all game long, and play fast, but it’s been a while since a pressing basketball team made it to the Final Four. Coaches who emphasize pressure defense often adapt their system to their situation and move away from the press as a fixture. Rick Pitino used the press a lot while at Kentucky, but he now uses more half court pressure. Bob Huggins switched to his Press Virginia style for several years, but that was more dependent on his personnel.
This personnel doesn’t scream a high paced pressing style team.
The lead guard, Isaacs, has spent his college career with coaches who emphasize positional defense like Grant McCasland and Greg McDermott. Griffen made his name as a good defender in Tuscaloosa, but that was within Nate Oats pack-line approach. If Mgbako is able to break out, he’s going to end up being a guy you want on the floor for his ability to make shots and generate offense.
Of the likely starters, or top end of the ration players, only Federiko had a higher defensive BPR than an offensive BPR.
So I think what people expect from Bucky Ball, may not be what Bucky Ball ends up being. Still forcing pressure on the offense, but maybe less frenetic of a pace. Making an effort to guard, but also keeping your best players on the floor. This roster needs a talented wing like Mgbako to break out. You can expect Isaacs, if he’s healthy, to be a quality scoring guard. You hope Griffen can re-establish what made him so consistent at Alabama, and Jacari Lane can help out as a scorer as well.
But to go from pretty good to really good this team must get something from the wing. Whether that’s Mgbako or Dibba, or Dominguez, the Aggies need to have another position with offensive production.
My Results: Texas A&M Aggies — 11th in Conference, 8-10
About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.
If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.
Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.
The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an in-depth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.
GLOSSARY
* – an asterisk denotes a known walk-on player
GP – Games Played
%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury
%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.
ORtg – Offensive Rating, similar to a points per possession but averaged out over 100 possessions. So it’s how many points a player would score if they were responsible for 100 possessions.
BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.
PAR – Points Above Replacement, a Rock M+ proprietary rating measuring projected on-off impact adjusted for time on the floor.
PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.
For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.
