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.
