Samford basketball coach Bucky McMillan, who led his team to the program's first regular-season Southern Conference title this past season, has received a seven-year contract extension.
The terms of the contract have not been revealed, but it runs through the 2029-30 season. McMillan just finished his third season at the school. His teams have improved in each of the three seasons. He thanked Samford president Dr. Beck A. Taylor and athletic director Martin Newton for their vision and support.
"What this is really saying, this extension, is there is an appreciation of what's going on there," McMillan said. "I'm just a small part of that. That's from the players, that's from the administrators, that's obviously the fans that we have and all the supporters. This hasn't just been a Samford thing, this has been a Birmingham thing. We have so many supporters all across this state jump on board with us."
McMillan is 48-35 over his three seasons at Samford, with back-to-back 20 wins in a season for the first time in school history. He's had five players earn All-SoCon honors and is a back-to-back winner of the SoCon Sports Media Association Anton Foy Coach of the Year Award.
This past season, the Bulldogs fought through a series of injuries to finish 21-11 overall and 15-3 in SoCon play. The Bulldogs tied with Furman for the SoCon regular season title.
"I think the No. 1 thing is you've always got to have a long-term view," McMillan said. "If you're always just trying to focus on the next season, then I don't know you can get too great. I think you can get too good if you have that long-term view of continuing to build things the right way with the right people. I said when I got hired, we're not going to take shortcuts here. We're not going to take shortcuts to have a pretty good year. We're going to do things the way it needs to be done here."
McMillan is rebuilding a roster with three high school signees and two transfer portal additions thus far. He said there are two additions still to come. The newcomers will blend with a strong returning cast, including starters Jermaine Marshall and A.J. Staton-McCray and key contributors Nathan Johnson, Achor Achor and Jaden Campbell.
The newcomers include high school signees Lukas Walls, Riley Allenspach and Josh Holloway and transfers Dallas Graziani of Division II national champion Nova Southeastern and Garrett Hicks of Alabama A&M.
"One thing that we've been doing is we've been recruiting winners, regardless of height, size statistics," McMillan said. "We've recruited a lot of guys who have won. I think when you get winners together, guys who know how to win, that continues. You've heard the phrase, 'Winners know why they win; losers don't know why they lose.' When you have a lot of winners, they know what winning is, and they know how to do that."
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