South Florida Bulls – Syndication Server

Amir Abdur-Rahim is this season’s best head coaching hire

Amir Abdur-Rahim is college basketball’s best head coach hire this season, leading the South Florida Bulls to a 12-1 record in the AAC.

Before the 2023-24 college basketball season began, a conversation about coaching hires would center around Rick Pitino at St. John’s. Or Chris Beard at Ole Miss. Or Damon Stoudamire at Georgia Tech. Or the Ed Cooley fiasco moving to Georgetown and Kim English replacing him at Providence.

And while those guys are all getting plenty of attention, good and bad, it looks like the best hire of the entire offseason is not in the Big East, or SEC, or ACC, but rather the American Athletic Conference.

Amir Abdur-Rahim took over a South Florida program that went 14-36 the last three years in conference play, who had not won 20 or more games since 2019, and who has not made the NCAA Tournament since 2012 when they were in the Big East. But in less than one full season, Abdur-Rahim has this team sitting at 19-5 overall and 12-1 with a two game lead in the AAC.

The season did not start off with this kind of promise. The Bulls began the year 2-4 with losses to Central Michigan, Maine, Hofstra, and UMass, but once Abdur-Rahim and his team got settled they immediately took off – winning 18 of their last 19 including wins over preseason conference favorites Florida Atlantic and Memphis.

Abdur-Rahim turned a Kennesaw State program that went 1-28 in 2019-20 into an NCAA Tournament team last year who not only won 26 games, but who nearly upset No. 3 seed Xavier in the first round.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise he’s already having this success at South Florida, especially in the transfer portal era which allowed the Bulls to add key pieces like Chris Youngblood, who followed Abdur-Rahim from Kennesaw State and is averaging 15 points on 43.2% shooting from deep.

They also added Kasean Pryor from Northwest Florida State College and Kobe Knox from Grand Canyon, providing Abdur-Rahim’s team with more floor spacing and rebounding.

There are a lot of coaches making a strong impression at their new jobs, including Danny Sprinkle at Utah State and Will Wade at McNeese, but it’s hard to understate how incredible this turnaround has been for South Florida under Abdur-Rahim.

After playing with fire in AAC play, Memphis Tigers get burned

South Florida was down 20 but managed to come all the way back and defeat the Memphis Tigers, ending their 10 game winning streak.

After two weeks of winning by the thinnest of margins, Memphis finally got burned on Wednesday evening – and it happened in spectacular fashion.

A 52-32 lead in the second half completely evaporated down the stretch and the Bulls of South Florida stunned the Tigers, winning 74-73, to end Memphis’ 10 game winning streak and hand them their first conference loss of the season.

Memphis climbed into the Top 10 of the AP Poll this week, but they hadn’t exactly been inspiring a lot of confidence with their recent performances.

Outside of a 112-86 win over Wichita State, Memphis needed late game heroics to win their other three AAC games against Tulsa (by 3) SMU (by 3) and UTSA (by six in overtime).

And while it looked like they were well on their way to a blowout against a South Florida team that was 2-1 in conference and 9-5 overall, the Bulls got hot from three and complacency from Hardaway’s team sent them packing.

“This one hurts because we worked so hard to get to this level,” Hardaway said after the game.

It was South Florida’s first win over a ranked team since 2012 and first over a top 10 team since beating Georgetown in February of 2010, and represented a signature win for first year coach Amir Abdur-Rahim, who led Kennesaw State to the NCAA Tournament last year.

“It’s not about us,” Abdur-Rahim said. “It’s about the University of South Florida. … This is a great win for the University of South Florida, and this group of kids who allow us to push them.”

Memphis becomes the latest ranked team to fall to an unranked opponent, but with far fewer opportunities to pick up Quad 1 wins thanks to their conference, every loss is magnified for the Tigers.

Memphis will try to get back on track on Sunday as they head on the road to take on Tulane, with tip-off slated for 1:00 PM ET.

Price tag of USF’s new stadium comes to light in proposed budget

USF’s new stadium has a price tag officially attached to it.

The price tag of the University of South Florida’s new football stadium that is set to be built on the Tampa, Florida campus has been revealed.

According to Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times, USF’s proposed budget for the stadium would be a total of $340 million. The university is proposing paying for $140 of that $340 million and financing the remaining $200 million over a 20-year window according to the report.

According to WUSFnews, an on-campus public media organization, previous proposals for the Bull’s new stadium ranged between $300 and $350 million.

The projected capacity for the new stadium is set to be 35,000 and will be located on the east side of the university’s campus.

Earlier this spring, the university’s board of trustees approved $22 million to be put toward the design of the new stadium. The plans would be created by Barton Marlow and Populous, a sports and entertainment architecture and building firm which has worked on multiple projects such as the Atlanta Brave’s Truist Park and renovations completed at Camping World Stadium in the city of Orlando.

The university is currently hoping to have an on-campus stadium completed prior to the beginning of the 2026 season. The USF Bulls have played their home games at Raymond James Stadium, the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since 1998.

Three new stadiums have opened at the FBS level since 2020, the newest being San Diego State’s SnapDragon Stadium which is located near the former location of San Diego Stadium (also known as Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium) in San Diego. It was built with a construction cost of $310 million.