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Those who have known Bucky McMillan the longest are the ones least surprised at his current success.
This winter, in his fourth season as the men’s basketball coach at Samford University, McMillan took the Bulldogs to the program’s first NCAA Tournament in 24 years, won the most games in Samford single-season history and won the Southern Conference outright for the first time in program history.
Samford even had a few moments in the national spotlight, giving Kansas a stern test in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
“I don’t think anybody that’s ever been involved with [McMillan] was surprised to see what they were watching that night, when they played Kansas,” said Christian Schweers, a former assistant of McMillan’s.
McMillan, a Mountain Brook native turned legendary high school coach, has reached the apex of his career (for now, anyways) in the place he grew up, surrounded by many of the people who helped him become who he is today.
And he’s not planning on changing that any time soon.
Within walking distance
Nearly everything McMillan has achieved in his basketball career to this point has been confined to a pretty tight radius. He grew up near English Village in Mountain Brook and began playing basketball at the Shades Valley YMCA two miles away.
He played basketball in town through his school days at Mountain Brook High School — graduating in 2002 — then embarked on a college career at Birmingham-Southern College, a 10-minute drive from home.
Following his playing days, he returned to Mountain Brook High School as the junior varsity coach before ascending to the varsity job for 12 years. In those 12 years, his teams had unprecedented success, reaching the state finals seven times and winning five state championships.
He was named the head coach at Samford in April 2020 and has been there the last four years. How far is that from McMillan’s childhood home? Two miles.
“All the people who helped raise me, all of them that taught me so much about life, I’ve learned those lessons right here in this city,” he said.
Self-belief
McMillan often tells the story of his initial meeting upon taking the reins of the Mountain Brook High program. He told parents, players and everyone else in the room that he was going to do something that had never been done at Mountain Brook: win a state championship.
He did more than that, establishing the Spartans as one of the nation’s premier high school programs, a status that remains today, a few years after he departed.
He took that same mindset to Samford, when many doubted that a coach with only high school experience could win at the Division I college level.
“I’ve always been confident in what I was doing, because at the end of the day, I know how hard we work,” McMillan said.
In McMillan’s first year at Mountain Brook, the Spartans went 18-12. After that, they never won fewer than 23 games in a season — but that doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing.
“It took us five years to win a regional game, and that year, we won the [first] state championship,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve got to lay the foundation, and that’s the hardest thing.”
McMillan had to lay a similar foundation at Samford, a program that had not experienced much success in the previous two decades. Even throughout a rocky first season (which the pandemic certainly did nothing to help), he believed in the direction the program was going.
He has since won three consecutive SoCon Coach of the Year awards.
“We’re winning now because we held the standards of the program in the highest regard that first year,” he said. “That year was the reason we are able to win today.”
Schweers sees some striking similarities in what McMillan is doing at the college level.
“It feels like Mountain Brook 2.0,” Schweers said.
‘Bucky’s genius’
Upon taking the job at Samford, McMillan wanted to surround himself with people he knew he could trust, people he knew would work as hard as he does and people who knew him well.
Associate head coach Mitch Cole, assistant coach Dave Good, special assistant to the head Duane Reboul and director of internal operations Skip Wellborn are among McMillan’s staff at Samford and are guys who have been on the same journey for a long time.
McMillan played for Reboul and Cole at Birmingham-Southern, while Good and Wellborn coached with him at Mountain Brook over the years before joining him at Samford.
“Bucky’s greatest strength is his loyalty to the death, almost,” Schweers said. “He’s got so many relationships. They have grounded him.”
Then there are coaches like Schweers, Tyler Davis and Stu Stuedeman. All three were assistants for varying time periods under McMillan at Mountain Brook, and all three are presently in the midst of successful head-coaching tenures.
Davis is the current head coach at Mountain Brook and Stuedeman is at Cullman, with both claiming state championships in recent years. Schweers is at Huntsville, most recently taking the Panthers to the state final four.
They all cut their teeth “working with” McMillan, as Stuedeman calls it.
Each tells stories of how hard McMillan works, the late hours that he obsessively watches film and the — for lack of a better term — epiphanies he has that instill confidence in everyone around him.
Davis takes pride in what he and McMillan have helped create at Mountain Brook, but Davis is also an alumnus of Samford, so he has enjoyed seeing the resurrection of his old college program as well.
Davis was out of coaching when McMillan brought him on staff, and he recalls a coach dedicated to the details.
“We were never worried about the results,” Davis said. “It was unrealistic to play a perfect game, but Bucky was meticulous on the details. He would never leave anything uncovered.”
One of Mountain Brook’s most notable wins came in 2018 against IMG Academy out of Florida. The night (or morning, more accurately) before the game, the Spartans coaching staff was collectively putting together a plan to take on such an elite team.
“Bucky just stands up and says, ‘We got them,’” Stuedeman recalled. “‘We’re going to win this game and we’re going to do it this way.’ It’s 3 a.m., you’re tired, but there was such an energizing feeling hearing him say that.”
Schweers has a similar story from 2013, the year Mountain Brook won its first state title. The Spartans had to beat Lee-Huntsville in the regional final on the road to that title, but there was no shortage of doubt leading up to the title game.
“Bucky had been pulling these crazy hours and I remember staying up as late as I could, or we’d be at the office until midnight, and no one was all that confident,” he said. “He comes in the day before and he’s got all this confidence, saying, ‘I got it. I know we’re going to win and here’s how.’
“I really think that was him doing what he does best, and that’s inspiring people to do things they didn’t think they could do.”
Stuedeman has a term for that type of thing.
“It’s Bucky’s genius,” he said.
Not looking to leave
Any coach who has success at a mid-major program is going to be mentioned for jobs at bigger schools, and McMillan’s name was mentioned in reference to a few jobs this spring. But he reaffirmed his commitment to Samford by signing a contract extension in late March.
It’s not lost on McMillan how many of the people in his life are still able to have a front-row seat to his journey today. His parents and siblings were along for the ride all season. Many of the men on staff with him now have been a part of his basketball story for years on end.
“They’ve impacted me in a way and God gave me a platform to pour back into so many,” he said. “And very rarely does it happen that those lessons are all taught in a radius of five miles. It’s pretty unique.”
McMillan may not need to leave his hometown to continue building something great. There are examples in college basketball of mid-major programs creating long-lasting relevance on the national scene. Programs like Gonzaga, Creighton and Butler are just a few to make that ascension.
Who’s to say Samford can’t be added to that list in the coming years?
“I like Samford a lot and we’ve got a good thing going,” McMillan said. “I feel like I’ve got a lot of my best friends coaching with me. You’re in your home city, you’re winning and it’s so much dang fun right now.”
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