As far as we know this was all Trev and whoever Trev happens to trust in the college basketball coaching ranks outside of a big push by some influential people for Chris Beard which I think Trev was willing to do, but if that one specific one didn't work out we were going to go in a completely different direction.
I think trying to piece together the order of operations we went through is an interesting question and how it might have gone differently if we had our opening earlier in the process.
Of high major jobs, I'm not sure we beat out any of the schools that hired the hot up and comers. Iowa (McCollum from Drake), Minnesota (Medved from Colorado State, this one is kind of a special case because he's an alum, not sure Minnesota gets him without that), Virginia (Odom from VCU), West Virginia (Ross Hodge from North Texas). Some other potential candidates that were off the board like Richard Pitino (New Mexico -> Xavier). Do we like any of those guys enough to outbid (by enough that we'd have to outbid them) the schools that got them? Maybe Hodge?
There was a couple of guys that were intriguing prospects kind of like Bucky that were already off the board also, but probably could have still been gotten if we were really convinced they were the guy, Bryan Hodgson (Arkansas State -> South Florida), Eric Olen (UC San Diego -> New Mexico),
A big wild card question is would we have been interested in Will Wade, and if so, could we have hired him instead of NC State? My gut feeling is maybe and no, but who knows.
Some things we're pretty sure did happen:
- We offered the job to, and thought we had, Chris Beard from Ole Miss - what an alternate reality this is to live in for a bit, at this point I'm glad it didn't happen, I was kind of iffy on it anyway
- We talked to Steve Lutz of Oklahoma State, and I think offered him the job - This was a favorite of mine during the process. I think he's got Oklahoma State trending back in a good direction. Whether Oklahoma State upped their NIL package or what I dunno, but didn't work out.
- We talked to Chris Mack of the College of Charleston - Not sure if we didn't officially offer or if he decided to stay where he is rather than taking on this challenge
Those three have some things in common that you really like in a search like this, they've previously worked at high major schools as head coaches. But then, really kind of overnight, it seems like we decided rather than go that route, or go the easy route and hire a mostly mediocre coach with ties to the school (Moser - OU; Forbes - Wake Forest), let's take a risk and see what happens.
Somebody soon was going to hire Bucky, I had him on my 2025 coaching carousel thread as a "Ready to jump" candidate. I think a lot of schools were hoping he'd jump somewhere like the MVC or American and run a program there for a few years to see how he does, because Samford to a power conference is a big jump, especially considering he's never even been an assistant at a high major job unlike some of these other guys. Have to remember that he was coaching high school basketball in 2019. Even Nate Oats was an assistant at Buffalo for a couple of years before he got the head job. But he's a coach that a lot of people have been keeping an eye on.
When it first started coming out that we were actually talking to him my reaction was "no way...." it's a VERY un-A&M move historically. Not only is Samford to A&M a HUGE jump, but he very famously plays a different style of basketball. This is a little akin to Texas Tech hiring Mike Leach but if instead of him being OC at Oklahoma and Kentucky he was the head coach at like Sam Houston.
