Georgia Tech Basketball: 8 candidates to replace Josh Pastner as head coach

Amir Abdur-Rahim

The alphabet decided the order of the coaches but we’re diving right in with one of the top candidates for Georgia Tech to consider. There’s no telling what exactly the Yellow Jackets are looking for after Pasnter failed to move the needle, but this is a coach on the rise who’s from Atlanta and has hands-on experience both in the state and directly at Georgia Tech.

Abdur-Rahim was born in Atlanta and played his college ball at Southeastern Louisiana before beginning his coaching career. He worked at a number of different schools, most notably a year as Georgia Tech’s director of player development and a year under Tom Crean at Georgia. In 2019, he was brought to Kennesaw State to begin his head coaching career and the progress has been impressive. After going just 1-28 in his first season at the helm, Abdur-Rahim just clinched the Owls to their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament with an A-Sun Tournament crown.

He’s from Georgia and he already turned around a basketball program in far worse shape than this; why couldn’t Abdur-Rahim work out for the Yellow Jackets? He’s certainly a name who’ll come up for bigger jobs in the coming years and his direct connection to Georgia Tech makes it even more intriguing. It’ll also be interesting to see how quickly he bails on his successful rebuild at Kennesaw State, especially with that program heading to Conference USA in 16 months.