Vanderbilt Basketball: 12 candidates to replace Jerry Stackhouse as Head Coach

Bucky McMillan

We’re almost exclusively looking at current head coaches and it’s no surprise to see McMillan named here after the success he’s had in recent years. One important thing to note is that McMillan is a lot like Stackhouse, having very little collegiate coaching experience. The major difference is that at least McMillan has had a winning college program.

A native of Birmingham, McMillan played his college ball at Birmingham-Southern before becoming a high school coach after graduation. After two seasons as an assistant, he became the head coach at Mountain Brook High School in Alabama, helming one of the nation’s most successful programs for a dozen years. In 2020, he was hired by Samford and has authored quite the turnaround. His Bulldogs have 21+ wins in three straight years and are heading to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 24 years.

While most of his experience did come at the high school level, McMillan wasted no time in making an impact in the college game. He’s doing this in the SoCon at Samford, so the jump to the SEC would be significant, but there are several successful power conference head coaches who started in this league. What’s most important is the quick success that McMillan created with this program; could he maneuver something similar with these Commodores?