“In Alabama, if you said the name Bucky, most of the time, people knew who you were talking about, and then this gas station rolled into town,” McMillan quipped during his introductory press conference Monday.

But the former coach at Samford wasn’t hired as A&M’s 23rd basketball coach because of his wit — he was brought in to transform a program with a reputation for being dull and and stripped to the bare bones with the departure of Buzz Williams. It’s a challenge McMillan said he had to embrace, and he did it with the full backing of Samford Athletic Director Martin Newton.

“When this job came open, he said, ‘Bucky, if you can take that job, you got to take that job, because that job is about to be perhaps the best job in the country, with the way college athletics is going and the people behind that program,’” McMillan recounted.

The 41-year-old coach said that the intends to build “an elite basketball program, a first class basketball program,” something A&M’s resources should help achieve. While McMillan wants basketball players with tremendous talent, he said he will also be looking for players who are ready to work.

“People don't differ in their desire to win; they differ in the price they're willing to pay to do it,” he said. “And these student-athletes that we have are going to pay that price, and we're going to work hard and we're going to work harder than our competition.”

McMillan made a name for himself in the coaching ranks with his “Bucky Ball” style, where his teams play at a frenetic pace on both ends of the court. Samford was not only 13th nationally in scoring this past season, but fourth in turnovers forced.

“We play a style that wins. We just play very fast. Very fast. When I was at Samford, we were a top ten scoring team in the country. That's never happened for a mid-major program. Our goal is to be one of the top-scoring teams in the country, and at some point, we will certainly lead the country in scoring,” he said. “We play full-court defense. We run, we pressure, we shoot a lot of threes, and we're going to attack the whole game.”

During his comments, Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh laid out McMillan’s job duties for him.

“Bucky, your job is to beat the hell out of everybody. It's a simple job description,” he said.

In spite of a big jump from the Southern Conference to the SEC and having to rebuild a program from the ground up, McMillan said he wasn’t about to shy away from the challenge. He even invoked one of the most iconic moments in Aggie sports history as inspiration.

"I was in Bryant-Denny Stadium when a guy you may know by the name of Johnny Manziel rolled into town,” he said. “(The Aggies) were fearless. That's how we're going to play basketball. That's how we play basketball."