Shamburger is playing a major role at Missouri

LAHAINA » He might not have started his college career in the Hawaiian Islands. And he’s not going to finish it here. But somehow, Keith Shamburger keeps finding his way back to the middle of the Pacific.

The former UH point guard just completed three games at the EA Sports Maui Invitational with his new team, Missouri of the SEC. The Tigers’ primary ballhandler had three points and five assists in the seventh-place game on Wednesday to help Mizzou get past host Chaminade 74-60, and salvage a win here under new coach Kim Anderson.

"This team … is going to give it our all no matter what," Shamburger said.

He wears black and gold now, but the fortunes of Shamburger, a Los Angeles native, are still strangely intertwined with the state of Hawaii, and UH in particular. He took a visit to Manoa out of high school, but chose San Jose State instead and was a central figure in two years of UH-SJSU battles in the old Western Athletic Conference.

Then, mid-career, he changed his mind and decided to join up with UH and head coach Gib Arnold, spending a redshirt season then his full junior season in green and white. He led the Big West Conference in assists (5.4 per game) in 2013-14 and helped the Rainbow Warriors speed to 80 points per game, the program’s highest scoring average since the early 1970s.

He didn’t shoot it well from the field, but he helped close out several games at the free-throw line and hit a memorable banked 3 at the regulation buzzer for an eventual win in overtime at UC Irvine.

But then, suddenly, he’d had enough.

There were strong indications Shamburger’s relationship with Arnold had frayed. In April, he requested and was granted his release from the program.

"He made a commitment, and he knew he had to stick to it, but he never felt at home," his mother, Conchita Nickles, told The Missourian in June.

He graduated over the summer, allowing him to play immediately at a new school as a grad student.

After a few weeks of difficulty getting cleared at Mizzou late in the summer, Shamburger eventually pulled off the exceedingly rare feat of playing for three different Division I teams in a five-year college career.

That was never his goal coming out of high school in 2010. He feels like he has some unfinished business, and he might finally be in the right place to get it done.

"I was going to go to a school that was going to go deep in the (NCAA) Tournament," Shamburger said. "That was my whole plan from the beginning. And I think this whole (Mizzou) team, we can get deep in the tournament. That’s the whole plan. I’m not going to give up on my guys because we lost two in a row (to Arizona and Purdue) over here."

So far as a starter at Mizzou, Shamburger is averaging 7.8 points, 3.1 assists and 3.0 turnovers per game.

Strangely enough, current UH players Negus Webster-Chan and Stefan Jankovic transferred to Manoa from Mizzou, when Frank Haith was coach.

Mostly, Shamburger keeps in regular touch with Garrett Nevels and Aaron Valdes, rotation players to which he threw many of his 166 UH assists.

When Arnold was fired on Oct. 28 — Shamburger’s birthday — he said he felt sorry for his old teammates because of the sudden turmoil it caused just days before the start of the season.

"I was surprised, because I didn’t think it was gonna happen," Shamburger said. "A lot of people were telling me it was going to happen before the season, but I didn’t think it was going to happen because it was so late."

Associate coach Benjy Taylor had yet to receive assurance that he would coach out the season, so Shamburger went into coach-on-the-phone mode. He knew he had to reassure his old teammates during turbulent days in which Isaac Fotu left the program.

"Those (players) are the people I care about and always had my back no matter what," he said. "I always get with them guys and talk to them, no matter what they went through. So when Gib got fired, they hit me up and I just had to coach them because they always talk to me about everything. I just felt like I had to help them and I just wanted to make sure everything was good with them."

Lately, it has been. Shamburger took notice of UH’s recent successes against Pittsburgh on Maui and in the Gulf Coast Showcase.

"As long as my guys are doing what I know they can do, I mean, I’m proud for them," Shamburger said. "They proud for me and I’m proud for them. It is what it is. They doing good, and they beat Pittsburgh in a good game. I mean, we over here struggling. We gon’ learn, they gon’ learn. We gon’ all be good."