Loyola Marymount Reincarnated? Samford Puts Up 174 Points & Wants More

You officially have a college basketball team to watch during the 2020-21 season, and it's not one of the usual suspects. The Samford Bulldogs beat Division III Greenville (Ill.) University 174-99 Wednesday night in an exhibition game and announced to the college basketball world that they're going to bring excitement to the sport, unlike anything we've seen since Loyola Marymount made insane scoring look easy.

Samford led Greenville 102-50 at halftime and kept pouring it on in the second half. The Bulldogs finished 71-of-111 shots (64%) and 20-of-42 (47.6%) from three-point range. Loyola Marymount holds the Division I single-game scoring record of 186 points. That record was set in 1991 against U.S. International.

“We want to be a high-scoring team that pressures and is an attacking team on offense and an attacking team on defense,” Samford head coach Bucky McMillan said in April. “We’ll play a lot of guys. We do things a little bit differently. We sub a lot more than a lot of teams to keep guys fresh and go deep into our bench and try to create tempo. I think it’s important we make basketball very popular here at Samford, and it becomes a team the city and state can identify with.”

McMillan was hired at Samford after an incredibly successful run as a high school coach that included 333 wins over 12 years at Mountain Brook (AL) High School. McMillan's high school teams won 23-plus games for 11 straight years.

The first-year head coach knows he'll need big-time help from bench players to put up the numbers he's promising to fans. If opening night is any indication, McMillan has the artillery to keep this up. Ten players scored 10-plus points, and 16 players total saw action during the game. Next up on the schedule is Alabama A&M Sunday at 2 p.m. on ESPN+. Set an alert so you don't miss that one on a backup TV.