Following graduation, Baucom took a career in law enforcement and worked as a policeman and North Carolina state trooper.

In his lone year at Davidson, the Wildcats went 25–5, 14–0 in the Southern Conference, and won the league's regular season championship while participating in the National Invitation Tournament.

[3] After spending two seasons as an assistant at Division II Mars Hill, where he was a scout and recruiting coordinator, Baucom served the same role for one year at Northwestern State in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Baucom then returned to the Southern Conference where he worked three seasons under head coach Steve Shurina at Western Carolina.

Baucom immediately made an impression; his first year in 2003–04, he led the Pioneers to a 19–8 season en route to a South Atlantic Conference championship.

In addition to the struggles on the court, Baucom's heart problems returned, as his previously installed pacemaker had calcified, rendering it difficult to remove and leading to infections and clotting.

[2] It was ultimately replaced with a defibrillator, but Baucom would end up missing twelve games on the season during four months of procedures.

[5] To counter this, Baucom installed a fast-pace, high-scoring offense that was a mixture of the 1980s Loyola Marymount teams and Grinnell College, among others.

[6] The method proved to increase success as well, as the Keydets went 14–19, the most wins in a season in nine years, and made an upset run through the Big South tournament, defeating Liberty and High Point.

The following year, VMI went 14–15 and lost in the conference quarterfinals, which marked the end of forward Reggie Williams' career.

[5] After defeating Charleston Southern to move to 20–3 and 11–2 in the conference, VMI skidded towards the end of the year with three straight losses, two of which were against weaker opponents.

Baucom's contract was extended again through the end of the 2017–18 season (at the same salary) by VMI athletic director Donny White on August 21, 2013.

Thanks in large part to the play of senior center D. J. Covington, VMI defeated Canisius, IPFW and Ohio to advance to the tournament's semifinals.