Legendary coach Shakey Rodriguez, who won 5 state crowns at Miami High, passes away

Marcos “Shakey” Rodriguez, one of the giants of high school basketball and the coach with the best single-season record in FIU history, suffered a brain aneurysm on Tuesday and died Wednesday night.

Jose Ramos, who played for Rodriguez at Miami High and served as his assistant coach at FIU and also in high school basketball, was with his mentor and the family at the hospital on Wednesday night.

Rodriguez was 67.

“I walked into Miami High as a troubled youth in 1985, and Shakey took me in,” said Ramos, who was sobbing as he spoke to the Miami Herald. “He helped so many people, but he never took any credit.”

Aside from his role on the sidelines, Rodriguez had also served as a mentor to a pair of the nation’s top college basketball head coaches: Frank Martin, who led South Carolina to the Final Four in 2017; and Anthony Grant, who led Dayton to a No. 3 national ranking this past season.

But it was as Miami High’s coach in the late 1980s when Rodriguez first made his name. He led the Stingarees to five state titles with some of the most dominant teams in Florida history. Among the players who competed on Rodriguez’s Stings teams were Doug Edwards, who went on to become an NBA first-round pick; Gimel Martinez, who played for the Kentucky Wildcats; and Ramos, who played for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Thanks in part to Rodriguez, Miami High won those aforementioned championships in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993, making it to six state finals in that amazing seven-year stretch.

In 1995, Rodriguez inherited an 11-19 FIU team and turned it around, almost immediately. By 1996-97, the Panthers and Rodriguez went 16-13, their first winning season in four years.

The next season, FIU went 21-8, setting school records that still stand in terms of total wins and winning percentage (.724).

Rodriguez left FIU after he went 16-14 in 1999-2000, and he had a winning overall record at the school (79-66).

During his five-year tenure there, Rodriguez also brought in perhaps the two best players in FIU history — Raja Bell and Carlos Arroyo, both of whom played in the NBA.

“My heart is broken [for Shakey],” Arroyo said when reached by the Herald on Wednesday. “He was more than a coach to a lot of us.

“He was very demanding on the court — but with a warm heart, just like a father.”

Arroyo said Rodriguez was the coach who recruited him out of Puerto Rico.

“Shakey always believed in me, just like I believed in myself,” Arroyo said. “He gave me an opportunity to pursue my dreams. My family always trusted his disciplinarian ways, his self-confidence and his winning attitude.

“I will forever be indebted to him. Today is a sad day for our basketball family.”

A father of three, Rodriguez mentored countless players, including Marcus Carreno, who went on to become Miami High’s boys’ basketball coach from 2001 to 2014; and Sam Baumgarten, who has been Miami High’s girls’ basketball coach since 2010.

Rodriguez, who also coached high school basketball at Krop and at Mater Academy following his time at FIU, was singularly focused on basketball.

Even when he did crossword puzzles on the team bus, it was with the goal of keeping his mind sharp for ball.

“I’ve known Shakey my whole life. I was his ball boy in the mid-1980s, and I played for him briefly,” Baumgarten said. “We had some amazing teams, and I learned a lot from him.

“Yes, our teams were extremely talented, but — because of Shakey — we were always more prepared than the opposition. We knew the opposing team’s sets inside and out. I think we could run them better than they could.”

Carreno, who played for Rodriguez for seven years, both at Miami High and at FIU, said Shakey’s confidence — which could also be called a swagger — was there because of that famed preparation.

“It wasn’t arrogance,” Carreno said. “But Shakey was a worker. His attitude was, ‘I live and breathe basketball. This is what I do.’

“And when he walked out on the floor, you knew he was in charge.”