Cal Sports Report

Cal Interviews Kennesaw State Coach Amir Abdur-Rahim for Coaching Vacancy

His brother is former Cal standout Shareef Abdur-Rahim and is the first person known to have interviewed after Mark Fox was dismissed

Jake Curtis

Cal reportedly has interviewed Kennesaw State head coach Amir Abdur-Rahim for the Bears' vacant basketball head coaching job.

Marc J. Spears reported the news. Abdur-Rahim is the brother of former Cal star Shareef Abdur-Rahim, and he went to the same Georgia high school as former Cal star Jaylen Brown, now with the Celtics.

-- Ex-Cal assistant Billy Kennedy says Abdur-Rahim would be a good fit for Cal --

Abdur-Rahim, who turned 42 year old on March 18, emerged as a hot prospect after leading Kennesaw State to a 26-9 record this year and a berth in the NCAA tournament before losing to Xavier in a close game.

The progress he made at Kennesaw State was remarkable. He took over a team that had gone 6-26 in 2018-19 the season before he arrived. The Owls went 1-28 his first season, 5-19 in his second and 13-18 in his third before the big breakthrough this season, when Kennesaw State went 15-3 in the Atlantic Sun Conference, winning both the regular-season and conference toutnament titles.

In the NCAA tournament, the 14th-seeded Owls led No. 3 seed Xavier by 13 points with less than 10 minutes left in the game. But Kennesaw State could not hold off the Xaiver rally. 

Before coming to Kennesaw State, Abdur-Rahim was an assistant at Georgia, Texas A&M, College of Charleston and Murray State.

Cover photo of Amir Abdur-Rahim by Bob Donnan, USA Today

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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