Texas A&M picked as Jon Rothstein's SEC Preseason Sleeper in 2025-26

The Texas A&M Aggies had a long offseason. After former head coach Buzz Williams had found success in Aggieland, going to the NCAA Tournament three straight seasons, he left for Maryland. That forced some massive turnover within the program, landing on Bucky McMillan as their new head coach.

It’s now hard to judge Texas A&M as a roster going into the 2025-26 season. In a competitive SEC, it could be a difficult year. Despite that, analyst Jon Rothstein shared on Inside College Basketball that he has the Aggies as a sleeper team next year.

“This might be a little of a surprise,” Jon Rothstein said. “I am going with Bucky McMillan and the Texas A&M Aggies. Now, for a lot of people who aren’t familiar with Bucky McMillan, this is somebody who came from the Birmingham area… But he was the high school coach for Trendon Watford, who went to high school in the Birmingham area, then went to LSU to play for Will Wade. He then became the Samford head coach, led Samford to the NCAA Tournament. Samford almost beat Kansas in 2024. Now, he’s the Texas A&M coach.”

Bucky McMillan coached high school basketball at Mountain Brook in Birmingham, Alabama, for more than a decade. There, he’d take his team to seven state Final Fours. In the 2020-21 season he made the jump to college at Samford, going 99-52 there over five seasons and making the NCAA Tournament.

At Texas A&M, the Aggies have leaned into the Transfer Portal. With some success there, it’s easy to see the vision for Texas A&M. That’s a portal class that includes players like Pop Isaacs, Rylan Griffen, and Mackenzie Mgbako among the 10 players entering the program as transfers.

“He’s got a really, really nice first year roster,” Rothstein said. “Pop Isaacs, Rylan Griffen, Mackenzie Mgbako, Federiko Federiko. Should be a really good shooting team. Should be a team in my opinion that has a chance to compete for a NCAA Tournament berth in its first year under Bucky McMillan.”

Pop Isaacs, who Rothstein mentioned, is a transfer coming off a season where he battled a season-ending hip injury. In a recent injury update, he was cleared for non-contact activity. Certainly, getting him back is going to be massive for Texas A&M.

Bucky McMillan explains what ‘Bucky Ball’ moniker means

During his time as a high school coach, Bucky McMillan earned a moniker for “Bucky Ball.” That’s a style of play he’s looked to maintain since then, and recently explained in better detail.

“It’s funny. Somebody asked me that the other day from up here. So, when I was coaching high school basketball in Alabama back in the day, all the coaches in the suburban schools they played in the ’30s and ’40s. Really slow. Ran the flags. No shot clock. Shoot it after a minute, and we were just — if I coached, we were never going to do that. We were going to trap until they shot the ball. Shoot as quickly as possible. Take a lot of threes,” McMillan said.

“So, some of the old school coaches in the area used to say it as a negative, right? Like it wasn’t disciplined basketball if you played fast and you shoot threes. Like, ‘Oh, they’re just playing Bucky Ball over there.’ You know? That kind of mindset. Then we started winning a lot. And then it became known as a positive in the community that I coach in. Basically, up-tempo basketball. Shoot a lot of threes. You see more and more of it today. But 15 years ago people thought a three-point shot might be a bad shot. We’ve always been a high volume three-point shooting team, up-tempo team.”