Former Tiger Joins The Sharks

Coming out of high school things were looking up for Shane Rector.

The slender 6-foot-2 point guard was rated by rivals.com as a three-star recruit. His penchant for scoring—he averaged 18.9 points a game at South Kent School in Connecticut his senior year— landed him a scholarship at the University of Missouri, a formidable Division I basketball program. 

But Rector soon found that playing time at Missouri was sparse. The Tigers, you see, were blessed with a Top 20 recruiting class last year. They won 23 games. That bought Rector a permanent seat on the bench. He averaged 4.6 minutes per game, and a scant 0.5 points and 0.35 rebounds as a freshman.

At the end of the season, Missouri’s Head Basketball Coach, Frank Haith, left for the University of Tulsa. Rector decided to leave the Tigers too.

He started looking at other schools. Rector considered  Gulf Coast University, St. John’s University, Westchester Community College and South Plains College. In the end he decided that Miami Dade College was the best fit to help revive his college basketball career.

“Shane is a good player. He transferred from a high level and he is a sophomore so he has experience playing in the Southeastern Conference,” Sharks Head Basketball Coach Stephen Cowherd said. “[He] can really guard, shoots it well, does a really good job getting in the lane, and making people better.”

The Sharks will lean on 20-year-old Rector’s experience playing against big-time competition in the SEC. This year’s team at MDC is top-heavy with freshmen—it features only four sophomores of which only one, Jaylin Gilbert, was on the team last year.

Rector, who has had a basketball glued to his hands since he was four-years-old, hopes to help the Sharks improve on their 21-win season last year.

“[The men’s basketball team] hasn’t won States in a while,” Rector said. “We want to win States and then go to the National Tournament and do some work.”

The Sharks start their season at the Kendall Campus on Oct 31 against Rise Academy at the Theodore R.Gibson Health Center, 11011 S.W. 104 St., at 5 p.m.