Hastily assembled top ten list. These are not necessarily in order.
1) How hard we play - This, above anything else than actually winning games, is the thing I care about. I'd rather watch a season of a scrappy team clawing their way to a 9 seed than a super talented team coasting their way to an 9 seed, even if the end result is the same.
2) The style of play - Said this the moment the coaching search turned this way, but for Texas A&M basketball, we're not going to beat other teams trying to play the same kind of basketball everyone else is playing. We need some kind of edge to play, and our style is one.
3) How well he assembled this roster - We probably had to overpay for this roster because there was no proof of concept to show talented players, but Bucky knew how important it was to at least be competitive this season, and he went out and put together a competitive squad by looking under every possible rock. High major transfers, low major transfers, a professional international player, etc.
4) The way he interacts with fans - This should maybe be #1 when compared to the last coach, but he's not out here building a bunker around this program. From what I'm told he's interacting with donors, he's building up support, he doesn't seem like he actively hates our fans.
5) Pop Isaacs - Started a thread about this, but this is a player that for a couple of weeks in the fall I halfway expected to quit because that's what happened with previous coaches. We'd have players just mysteriously disappear from the roster. Isaacs was visibly frustrated, he got benched for an entire game, and now here he is. That shows me that Bucky isn't a "my way or GTFOH," he knows how to push the right buttons.
6) Defensive intensity - This is kind of an offshoot of #1 I guess but we are WAY better defensively than I ever imagined we'd be with this group of players. In league games we're third in the conference in defensive efficiency which is absolutely wild.
7) Press conferences - It's easy to like this compared to Buzz, but really compared to anyone, I like that he answers actual basketball questions with actual basketball answers. He doesn't act like we're protecting some kind of state secrets.
8) Commitment - This is probably an offshoot of #2, but it would have been really easy to back off the way we play when we lost to Oklahoma State and UCF, but we didn't. He believes in the system and ultimately knew it would click eventually.
9) In-game coaching experience - This is something that people don't value enough. Until you're the head man standing on the sideline in the heat of the game, you don't know what it's like. It's the difference between keeping a cool head and mentally running the scenarios and what you need to do versus being Steven Pearl coaching his 16th game ever and using his last timeout between free throws with 2 seconds on the clock in a one possession game. A lot of it might be at the high school ranks, but Bucky has coached so many games that he not only knows the percentages, but he's probably seen about everything that can possibly happen at the end of a game.
10) Knowing his weak spots - Absolutely huge. Coming in here, what did all of us immediately say was going to be a problem? How does he handle the day-to-day of running a major college basketball program, something he has absolutely no experience with. He's not only never been a head coach, he's never even been an assistant at this level. So what does he do? He assembles a staff that includes a former head coach of an SEC (and other high-major programs), two assistants and a S&C coach that not only have been around the block, but have actually coached HERE before. This was something that I don't think enough people appreciated, was building a staff that not only has high major experience, but knows this school and who the people to know are and can help him rapidly build support.
