Sean Miller bested by Texas A&M’s Bucky McMillan

Texas A&M basketball coach Bucky McMillan emerged from the thumping music that was shaking the walls of a celebratory Aggies locker room Saturday and plopped in front of the microphone to issue a straight-faced, matter-of-fact dissection of his team’s victory over the Texas Longhorns. 

But McMillan, now more than halfway through his debut season leading the Aggies, knows his audience. Toward the end of his media session, he tossed some chum in the water. 

“I totally understand rivalry games,” he said following a 74-70 Aggies win at Moody Center. “I totally understand fan bases. I love our fan base. I want all the Aggies back in College Station, the best city in the state, to celebrate really hard tonight.” 

McMillan’s opinions on College Station and Austin are certainly up for debate. Here’s what’s not: In the first Lone Star Showdown meeting between two first-year coaches, McMillan and Texas’ Sean Miller, the coach from College Station executed his winning blueprint more effectively. 

“They outclassed us,” Miller said. “They were the better team from start to finish.” 

Miller is in his 21st season as a Division I head coach. His methods — broadly — can be considered traditional. McMillan’s approach to winning is anything but. He deploys an intense style that depends on the full-court press and requires heavy rotation. He used it to win a pair of regular-season Southern Conference championships at Samford, a private school with an enrollment of just over 6,000 in the suburbs of Birmingham, Ala.. 

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Saturday, it translated to the big stage. Not because the full-court press tormented the Longhorns — Texas (11-7, 2-3 SEC) only turned the ball over eight times. But because the Aggies’ depth and intense approach better equipped them to meet the physical and mental demands of the game. Ten A&M players saw the floor against the Longhorns. Only one, Rashaun Agee, played more than 30 minutes. Texas, comparatively, uses an eight-man rotation by design. That meant Miller asked Jordan Pope (33 minutes), Dailyn Swain (37), Tramon Mark (32) and Matas Vokietaitis (30) to each play at least 75% of the game. 

“They have a lot of bodies that they can throw at us, trying to wear us out,” said Pope, who scored 17 points. “But at the same time, this is what we signed up for. High-level players, high-level conference. We’ve been playing basketball a long time. We can’t get worn out in 30 or 40 minutes if we want to compete at the highest level. I think in that second half, we’ve got to do a better job in terms of executing defensive schemes and coverages.”

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Miller, too, questioned his team’s mental fortitude. He knows his players are physically well conditioned, he said. But, against a Texas A&M team capable of throwing fresh players into the fray all the time, could the Longhorns weather the inevitable mental fatigue coming their way? In the second half, the answer was no. Texas allowed the Aggies (14-4, 4-1) to shoot 60% from the field and sent the visitors to the free-throw line 14 times.

Even after a solid enough first half, that translated into the Longhorns’ worst defensive display by effective field goal percentage since a loss to UConn on Dec. 12. McMillan, from the second-half jump, sensed he had the fresher team. One team attacked. The other trudged. 

“My message to those guys all the way through the end was to play like we’re down by 8 to 10 points,” McMillan said. 

His team obliged. And McMillan gave them some help with his clipboard and dry-erase marker, too, drawing up a handful of plays that completely negated the Texas defense and allowed the Aggies open looks at the rim. 

“We spotted them six or eight points just on those three- or four-set play calls,” Miller said. “That’s concentration. That’s coaching. That’s making sure your guys are ready for it. That was a big reason we lost today. It was too easy for them.”