When making a sphere using the cc sphere preset, a portion of the sphere remains blank

I'm trying to create a globe sphere in After Effect using the cc sphere preset. I have a world map and a rectangle which will form the actual sphere, as two separate layers (which I created in Illustrator). I precompose them and then apply the cc sphere preset but the edges of the rectangle remain separeted causing a blank space in the sphere (see attachment). I've tried increasing the dimension of the rectangle but it doesn't seem to solve the issue. Can anyone suggest a fix? Many thanks