Yeah obviously he's the part that's actually different, but similar to Stansbury yes?

Ah, for some reason I forgot about him, thinking it was Cole/Keller/Abdur-Rahim.

Detmersdislocatedshoulder said:

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bobinator said:

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How would anyone know if Buzz's staff is any good at all? None of them have any experience outside of working for Buzz except Roccaforte and even he's mostly been with Buzz for the last decade plus. It's crazy.

But the whole experiment is pretty fascinating. We're basically running back the entire staff from the Kennedy era but with a different guy at the top of the pyramid. Not sure I've heard of anything quite like that before.

I like it though, the biggest concern with hiring a coach like Bucky is whether all of the trappings of being an SEC-level head coach distract him too much from the things he's good at, but having coaches that have been around that block to either advise or just straight up handle some of that stuff is going to be extremely helpful.

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no personal knock against billy kennedy i know he had health issues while he was here but outside of the billy kennedy coaching piece i liked a lot of what the staff brought to the table. they could definitely recruit. you put a young hungry coach looking to prove himself with a staff that has proven it can bring in players to texas a&m and an exciting style and you have a chance to do something special.

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Agreed, but I do think it won't quite be to the level of expectation that seems to be building. I will be honest at first and how late all this took place, I figured we might be like Mizzou in the 23-24 season and go winless or close to it in the SEC. I am impressed with what he has brought together but none of those pieces are proven in the SEC and it's a ton to have to bring all those pieces together and have them mesh right away. He will have several pieces leave after this season and will have to bring in a lot of new pieces and mesh all those together again next year. I am just hoping it doesn't take him as long as one that understands all factors involved might actually predict/expect. I am hopeful and for sure excited to see a more explosive and offensive style of play. It really will be fun and again, hopefully more successful on a shorter curve than what should be reasonably expected.

That's what I see. He's not going to waste the opportunity.

I think everyone is hung up on the offense, which I get because ours has sucked for a while so it's exciting to think that we'll actually be good at it, but the defense is going to be the fascinating part that makes or breaks this deal.

It's been a minute since anyone tried this kind of defense at this level.

bobinator said:

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I think everyone is hung up on the offense, which I get because ours has sucked for a while so it's exciting to think that we'll actually be good at it, but the defense is going to be the fascinating part that makes or breaks this deal.

It's been a minute since anyone tried this kind of defense at this level.

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And I don't know that, as good as this roster is given the circumstances, the personnel are ideal for what Bucky would want to run his defense. I think we're closer to the exemplar on the offensive side than we are the defensive.

Haith recruited Aldridge to the whorns. Big rep. as a recruiter.

So, BK-like staff vibe is fair. With a turbocharged HC, system build on tempo. We've the house at Vegas forcing other teams into mistakes. It's a matter of numbers. If we can shoot and our bigs can guard 1-5, we'll be OK.

bobinator said:

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I think everyone is hung up on the offense, which I get because ours has sucked for a while so it's exciting to think that we'll actually be good at it, but the defense is going to be the fascinating part that makes or breaks this deal.

It's been a minute since anyone tried this kind of defense at this level.

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Better describe the defense for us basketball x's and o's novices. Thanks!

2nd Generation Ag said:

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staff is. His staff is much better than Buzz's i think. Several former head coaches always helps in my opinion.

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Worked for Saban in football.

Offense will never be my concern with Bucky. He runs a gimmicky NBA system just like Oats with lots of 3s and just firing away every chance you get. And with the talent we have and will attract, that's not going to be the main problem. We will have off nights, but we will be fine on that side.

It's the defense that's gonna be my main concern. I don't think we need to be as good as we were with Buzz, but we need to at least be solid. It's just wait and see.

As far as his staff, he's done a hell of a job assembling it. It seems like recruiting won't be the issue.

I don't know enough to get into specifics into the actual pressing schemes, maybe someone else will pop on here, but in pretty general terms:

• Most everyone in college basketball plays half court defense most of the time unless they're way behind, behind late in the game, or just trying to change the game flow, but as far as I know nobody at the high major level is pressing all the time. As in they're generally not challenging the ball or passes until the other team crosses midcourt.
• A few teams play a 3/4 court "token press." We did this the last few years where we semi challenged the ball in the back court, but not with any real urgency and the point of it was mostly to make the other team waste time before setting up their offense. We weren't especially active in it and the goal wasn't really to get turnovers.
• Even when teams do press full court, they generally will only do it on a made basket so that they have time to set up their defense. Pressing on a missed basket is really hard to do because everyone has to find their man or their spots while the ball could be in transition.

Bucky, at least at Samford, presses even on missed buckets. Samford has reliably been one of the fastest tempo teams in the country over the last five years, and his best team was his fastest team. In 2024 Samford was 10th in tempo (per Torvik.)

• By pressing all the time, you're going to be much better at it than teams who only press when they have to. Think about football teams that try to run a no huddle offense when they normally are three-yards-and-a-cloud of dust teams.
• You're going to turn the other team over. Samford was top 20 in the country the last couple of the years in opponents turnover %.
• You are going to give up some easy baskets sometimes.
• You're probably going to foul a lot.

What's really interesting about it is that it's basically the same logic behind some of what Buzz does, but done in a different way. It's like two people want to accomplish the same goal, but the way they're going about it is completely different.

In both cases, you're trying to play a defensive style that the other team isn't used to in an effort to get them out of their game mentally. Buzz did this by slowing things down with a really unusual zone defense, forcing the ball to certain spots on the floor, forcing secondary and tertiary players to take a high volume of shots. Bucky is going to do this by speeding up the other team. Force them to make decisions faster than they're used to, force them to mentally be trying to match us shot for shot, get them into an open court game the way that we want to play it.

But it's been a while since anyone has been a full court press make-or-miss type team at the power conference level. There are some teams that press a lot, West Virginia under Huggins, Shaka's teams, especially at VCU, but even they aren't quite the old '90's style "40 minutes of hell" basketball.

The only person at the high major level really doing something similar defensively that I know was Mike Anderson at Mizzou, Arkansas and most recently St. John's.

Nolan Richardson's 40 mins of hell style has to be the closest analog to what we're going to try to do imo. I don't know this for sure but I suspect we'll shoot more transitional 3's than Richardson's teams did tho.

Agreed there Bob. I think the only reason I used the word "gimmicky" was because of how fast Bama tries to go. I don't think the system is "gimmicky", but it's definitely a very fast system.

bobinator said:

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That's the coaching tree Anderson is from, so yeah, defensively probably pretty similar at least in style if not in specific scheme, but again I don't know the actual press schemes we plan to employ. Difference is the offense paired with it like you said.

I imagine we're going to look something like a Mike Anderson defense with a Nate Oats offense.

Pros:

- It's going to be entertaining to watch
- Should make us harder for bad teams to upset (more possessions should generally favor the better team)
- It's unique, which should help us in game prep and in recruiting. We're not just running riffs off of the same thing everyone else is doing.

Cons:

- Worried about fouling too much and giving away easy points at the free throw line.
- Experience in this kind of system is extremely helpful. Obviously you're going to have some new pieces each year, but you'd like to have a foundation of players to help teach the other players. We're not going to have that.
- Because we don't have experience, there's a high probability that we're going to get absolutely killed a few times.

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The issue is not going to be just about experience or even whether it can work in the current state of the SEC. The personnel is a little better suited for what Bucky wants to do offensively than defensively, which is going to exacerbate the learning curve on the defensive end.

It's likely to look pretty dang ugly on defense when we play anyone in non-con who is well-coached with multiple ball handlers. But even later in the season I think we're going to be leaning on offense to win.

Bobinator said: I don't know the exact press schemes they plan to employ.

There's a good discussion at YouTube "What is Bucky Ball? Bucky McMillan Named Next MBB HC at Texas A&M" by William Gallowey ---

where William Galloway interviews Britton Johnson 6'4" shooting guard who played for Bucky in high school and for Bucky and Nate Oats in college.

""Press the whole game on makes or misses, use a variety of defenses throughout the game: man-to-man zone, pressure zone, switch to a trapping man off a ball screen; you'll get a hundred different looks, slow down press, then speed it up, trapping full-court press into an uptempo offense, etc."

Bucky says a championship team must be good at all four aspects: full-court offense, half-court offense, full court defense, and half-court defense. They typically practice each of these for, say, 45 minutes.

Amazing how quality a staff can be when you value quality and experience over comfort blanket yes men

Relentless ball pressure in the half court forces increased tempo. You just can't run the shot clock when a team guards that closely in the perimeter. UH tried to stall against Florida's defense, and it cost them dearly. When a guy is in your face, you have to get around him, with or without a ball screen. I'll be very interested to see how our rim protectors fare once the perimeter overplay forces drives.

Usually what we've seen in these situations before is that the coach taking a step up a level tones down some of the extremes of what worked at a lower level.

I think we'll see pressing, but not at a rate similar to what he did at Samford. The thought process here usually goes something along the lines of system x worked at Samford because of inferior athletes and lesser coaches not being able to scout, adjust and beat your system. I'm interested to see how faithful he remains to Bucky Ball, but would be shocked if what we see isn't several steps below what he deployed at Samford in terms of trying to force the pace with the press.

Among the many reasons, he's going to want his top 5 fresh to finish games, and if we press for 40 minutes, there's no way those kids are going to be fresh in the final minute. Additionally, there are going to be some teams we play with strong physical ball handlers that will eat us alive and break the press for easy buckets. The press works best at the high major level when you deploy it strategically, and I expect Bucky to read the situation and use it as a tool in his toolbox but not the only tool.

Offensively though I bet he tries to stay pretty faithful to what has worked for him. Alabama among others has provided plenty of evidence that a fast pace on offense does work at the high major effort as long as you are taking the right shots.

I was pretty convinced we weren't going to play defense exactly the same way also until some of his more recent interviews, now I'm not convinced of that at all. He seems pretty confident in why he coaches the way he coaches so who knows.

It's going to be fascinating though. This is real Texas-Tech-hiring-Mike-Leach level stuff here as far as zigging where everyone is zagging and it's definitely not going to work if we dull some of the sharp edges right from the jump.

I think there's also a decent probability that we're going to be pretty bad at halfcourt defense, so there's something to be said for pressing just to get the other team moving at a speed that they're not used to and maybe taking some bad shots and getting gassed a bit and not getting set up on defense. Wouldn't work against an Alabama or Florida type team but might against a Tennessee/Ole Miss.

The only thing we're pretty sure of at all is that this roster has some shot makers, so maybe we're going to be perfectly fine with wide open basketball.

My guess is it drifts into a 3/4 court press focused like Buzz's did on putting opponents where we can manage them. I also think he will end up focusing more on defense than BuckyBall suggests.

I offer that not because of him but because of us.

greg.w.h said:

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My guess is it drifts into a 3/4 court press focused like Buzz's did on putting opponents where we can manage them.

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If I had to guess I'd guess the opposite actually.

I'm by no means some kind of x's and o's expert, so maybe one of the coaches on here could weigh in, but from listening to Bucky and watching some of how Samford plays, I think one area where Bucky is really different from other coaches is wanting to pressure the ball even after missed shots and turnovers.

So much focus from most teams on misses and turnovers is to get back and get set, and I think what Bucky sees in the current landscape is that when you do that, you're also either letting the other team get up and get set or you're so focused on getting to the right spot that teams like Alabama who work on transition basketball are using that to beat you down the court. If you're not guarding the ball, they're going to force the ball down the court.

So my guess is that, most of the time, we aren't going to be truly pressing all 94 feet, but that we're very aggressive in stopping the ball and really contesting the first couple of passes. Then once they break that initial pressure I'd guess most of the time we fall back into a more typical half court defense.

bobinator said:

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greg.w.h said:

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My guess is it drifts into a 3/4 court press focused like Buzz's did on putting opponents where we can manage them.

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If I had to guess I'd guess the opposite actually.

I'm by no means some kind of x's and o's expert, so maybe one of the coaches on here could weigh in, but from listening to Bucky and watching some of how Samford plays, I think one area where Bucky is really different from other coaches is wanting to pressure the ball even after missed shots and turnovers.

So much focus from most teams on misses and turnovers is to get back and get set, and I think what Bucky sees in the current landscape is that when you do that, you're also either letting the other team get up and get set or you're so focused on getting to the right spot that teams like Alabama who work on transition basketball are using that to beat you down the court. If you're not guarding the ball, they're going to force the ball down the court.

So my guess is that, most of the time, we aren't going to be truly pressing all 94 feet, but that we're very aggressive in stopping the ball and really contesting the first couple of passes. Then once they break that initial pressure I'd guess most of the time we fall back into a more typical half court defense.

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Tend to agree. Every so often you come across a point guard who is un-pressable. At A&M we had David Edwards. He could dribble through 5 men without even passing the ball. He wasn't fast, but he had an amazing handle in tight quarters (RIP). Then you get these sprinters like Jason Kidd, TJ Ford, or Ty Lawson. You just aren't pressing guys like that.

Tall teams are also very hard to press and the league is going to have a few of them. Though we're also going to be pretty tall so might offset that some.