It’s not just hype anymore. It’s not just about incoming transfers, preseason polls and Jon Rothstein tweets about who looks like a dangerous dark horse or which player will rise above their station this season.
Bucky Ball is real — and it’s spectacular.
The 12th Man is in for an exciting energy under new Texas A&M men’s basketball coach Bucky McMillan based on the Aggies 95-88 exhibition win over — an admittedly shorthanded — Arizona State in Rosenberg last Sunday.
Get ready for full-court press defense on every possession, quick trips to the free throw line and a whole lot of 3-pointers. These are the tenets of Bucky Ball, a system designed by McMillian with one goal in mind: Create high-possession games.
“We’re going to play a high-possession game,” McMillan said after A&M’s exhibition win over Arizona State. “That’s just how we play. So the fouls are going to be up there. We don’t want to foul, but we want to have that high-possession game where we’re putting them in foul trouble because there’s more possessions than a normal game.”
Graduate student forward Zach Clemence led the charge against the Sun Devils, with 20 points on 5-for-6 shooting from beyond the arc. The 6-foot-11 former Kansas Jayhawk also grabbed seven rebounds.
As for who will pop off against Northwestern State on Monday, nobody knows. That’s the beauty of Bucky Ball. It can be a different player every game. The Aggies had nine players score against Arizona State, and all of them had at least six points.
That’ll be important given that two of the Maroon and White’s most talented transfers — junior guard Pop Isaacs and junior F Mackenzie Mgbako — are both expected to miss time due to injury in the early part of the season.
“Most of the teams I’ve coached were 10 to 11 deep,” McMillan said. “ … It’s somebody’s night one night, somebody’s night the next night. But my whole deal is you can be out there as long as you can play it, as hard as you can play it unselfish.”
This is an A&M roster that came together rather last-minute, after McMillan was hired in early April with just one returning player for the Aggies after many transfers had already signed. As such, there were some chemistry issues that came up against the Sun Devils as the Aggies finished with 18 turnovers.
“Every team I think, in the first game, three things usually happen,” McMillan said. “Turnovers, bad shots and too many fouls. That’s usually what happens in every first game, every team that I’ve ever coached. Doesn’t matter how much we talk about it. … Not for the wrong reasons, just so amped up to play.”
McMillan wants to make one thing clear: Sometimes, this A&M team may not pass the eye test — but they will pass the analytics test.
“Sometimes, defense can feel worse than it is when they’re getting some uncontested buckets,” McMillan said. “But at the end of the day, it’s two points, and we just go by the point per possession. And at the end of the day, if we hold them below 1.07, I trust that the totality of what we do will lean on them to break their defense down so that we can flourish late.”
The Aggies will begin the regular season against a Northwestern State team that’s seen its own share of transfer portal struggles.
Ranked 267th in the country in KenPom’s preseason rankings, the Demons enter the year without their two most-used players last season in Second-Team All-Southland senior Addison Patterson and senior Jon Sanders II, who both transferred to Eastern Michigan.
They’ll have to rely on senior G Micah Thomas, who was named to last year’s Southland Conference All-Tournament team and averaged 17 points during the conference tournament.
The 12th Man will get its first look at regular season Bucky Ball when the Aggies face the Demons on Monday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m.
