This is an opinion column.

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Bucky McMillan will go into the Southern Conference tournament as a strong candidate for national coach of the year in college basketball.

Naturally, I want him to win it. Call me biased.

Samford men’s basketball has two games left on the schedule before the conference tournament. The Bulldogs are at Wofford on Wednesday night (6 p.m., ESPN+ ) and then at home for the regular-season finale against The Citadel on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPN+). Bucky Ball has already wrapped up the SoCon regular-season championship, and that’s going to allow McMillan to rest his players for the main event next week.

The SoCon tournament is in Asheville, N.C. This is a little off-topic, but is there a better location for a conference basketball tournament than a town in the mountains known as the craft beer Mecca of the East Coast? Get tickets here. I’m not going to rank Asheville ahead of New York and Madison Square Garden (Big East tournament), but let’s just say that I’m friends with plenty of people who would.

Samford (NET ranking of 68) goes into the conference tournament with the SoCon’s No.1 seed. The Bulldogs will need to win it all in Asheville to make the NCAA Tournament. At this point, the last question about McMillan’s development as a college coach centers around the ability of his teams to stack wins in the postseason. It’s almost time for another test. Since taking over at Samford, 40-year-old McMillan is 1-3 all-time in the SoCon tournament.

Last season, Samford was bounced out of Asheville in its first game despite sharing the regular-season championship with Furman. The Bulldogs were banged up going into the conference tournament, but McMillan has had slightly better luck with his roster this time around. I say “slightly” because McMillan held his two leading scorers out of the Bulldogs’ victory against ETSU over the weekend. Achor Achor had a slightly sprained foot. AJ Stanton-McCray was nursing a sprained knee he suffered in practice before last week’s dramatic victory against Furman.

It’s never perfect, though. That’s what separates the best coaches from their peers. The best of the best figure it out.

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, for example, was facing a challenge last week when standout player Jaylin Williams went down with a knee injury against Kentucky. Needing a spark, Pearl made a radical adjustment to his rotations by inserting three reserves into the starting lineup. The shake up worked. Chad Baker-Mazara led Auburn with 25 points in the Tigers’ victory against Georgia and guard Aden Holloway went 5-8 from 3-point range for 15 points.

No.11 Auburn (21-6, 10-4) is at No.4 Tennessee (21-6, 11-3) on Wednesday (6 p.m., ESPN). It’s one of the biggest games in the SEC this season. Pearl now goes into the game with options and two key players riding high on the self-confidence wave.

McMillan has made all the right adjustments this season, too. The Bulldogs won 17 games in a row thanks to the depth of the team’s bench. Samford’s 25 victories are already a single-season record for the school. McMillan was coaching Mountain Brook High School five years ago.

“It’s unfortunate in mid-major basketball that sometimes it comes down to three games in March, but the true testament, honestly, for your team is to do it in an 18-game sample size at their house and at our house,” McMillan said after the weekend victory against ETSU. “To be able to do that, and to go back-to-back and bring back two SoCon championships, the first time Samford has had back-to-back championships seasons, and to win it outright with two games left, I’m so excited for our university.”

I never doubted McMillan’s ability to coach at the college level. Plenty did, or at least wanted him to fail. Now McMillan has an outside shot at national coach of the year if Samford runs the table from here on out. With a record of 25-4 overall, Samford is currently tied with several schools around the country (Houston, UConn, Purdue and McNeese State) for most wins in the regular season.

Houston, UConn and Purdue are all projected to be No.1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament. For Samford, that’s pretty good company.

Samford opened the season with a 53-point loss to Purdue, so if it comes down to McMillan and Purdue coach Matt Painter then I don’t like McMillan’s chances. Whether he wins it or not doesn’t really matter. Being in the conversation is all that matters. The buzz is growing for Samford basketball and it’s fun to see it take shape.

I’ve enjoyed covering McMillan’s rise from the high school ranks. In life, it doesn’t matter where you start. McMillan won six games in his first season with Samford. The Bulldogs have now won at least 20 games in three consecutive seasons and McMillan has a chance to go into the NCAA Tournament with the most wins in the country.

Here’s the best part of it all. Bucky Ball — the college edition — is just getting started.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the signature book about Nick Saban’s reign at Alabama, “We Want Bama”.