Rwandan star center Kendall Lamar Gray has joined Bangui Sporting Club, a Central African Republic (CAR) outfit, ahead of the elite round of 16 of the Basketball Africa League (BAL) 2023 qualifiers, scheduled for Monday, November 14. Gray joins Rwanda’s international Kenny Kenneth Gasana on the team. Bangui SC progressed to the round of 16 on October 13 after beating Equatorial Guinea’s Nueva Era Basketball Club 69-60 in Yaoundé, Cameroon. From new faces to household names, some of the West Division Elite 16 teams hit the market, making some adjustments to their rosters. Even the five teams that competed in the Road to BAL Group Phase in October recruited a few new faces. Bangui Sporting Club, Abidjan Basket Club, for instance, reinforced squads with big names for their last chance to qualify for the Basketball Africa League season three. The club’s first game is on November 14, against rivals Association Sportive Sale (Morocco). Who is Kendall Gray? Gray is an experienced player who featured for various teams in the United States of America, Africa and Europe. He played college basketball for Delaware State University, being named the 2014–15 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Player of the Year. After going undrafted in the 2015 NBA draft, he signed with Medi Bayreuth of the Basketball Bundesliga in 2015. In 2016, he parted ways with Medi Bayreuth and was picked up by the Iowa Energy of the NBA Development League, although he did not play for them. Recently, he was plying his trade with JS Kairouan in the Tunisian top division league, something that gave him a taste of African basketball as well. With such experience, Gray is expected to play well for the Patriots but will also bring good advice to teammates. Rim-protector icon If you watched some of the recent matches in which Gray featured for the national team, you should have noticed how good he is at defence. He knows how to make timely blocks, plays a physical game, and can score. In the first window of the FIBA World Cup qualifiers that took place in Dakar, Senegal, in March, he registered Rwanda's highest efficiency rate (13) in the first two games while contributing 10 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2 blocked shots per game.
