10. Texas A&M Aggies
2024-25 Record: 23-11 (11-7 SEC)
When Buzz Williams departed College Station, he took a few things with him - bad offense, incredible offensive rebounding, hard-nosed defense, and some really good players. But the Aggies moved quickly to hire a fun, young coach in Bucky McMilan. McMilan’s style of play is almost the exact opposite of Williams’. He wants to push the pace, make a ton of threes, and force turnovers - rather than play lock-down shot-clock draining defense.
On paper, McMilan built a roster from the transfer portal that should allow him to run his style of basketball at Texas A&M. I really like the additions of Rylan Griffen (6.3 ppg), Pop Isaacs (16.3 ppg in eight games), and Jabari Lane (17.3 ppg) as perimeter scorers. All three have found success from deep - each making 70 or more threes in a season, as well as hitting better than 38 percent from deep for a season. Mackenzie Mgbako is a solid scoring threat inside and out, and Federicko Federicko should help shore up the defense on the interior.
The defense should be feisty, if nothing else, with how much McMilan likes to pressure the ball and switch up his defenses between zone and man. And with big man Federicko Federicko (1.2 bpg career) coming in from Texas Tech, A&M should be tough to beat at the basket.
If I were ranking the SEC based on how fun the teams could be to watch, Texas A&M would easily be in the top two in the conference, but being a fun team to watch doesn’t always result in wins. The Aggies have the potential to be a really good basketball team; they just need a lot of things to go right in McMilan’s first season. If the offense gels right away and his high-pressure defense works with this new roster, then A&M might surprise quite a few teams. There are a lot of new pieces that will need to learn how to play together, and until I actually see McMilan get wins against really good power conference opponents, I’m being a little more cautious with the Aggies.