AVON – Prior to the 1994-95 season, Tom Moore was working as a Division III head coach at Worcester he State in Massachusetts when he received a phone call from his friend, Karl Hobbs, a former UConn basketball point guard who was an assistant coach with the Huskies at the time.
Hobbs had just been elevated to the No. 2 assistant spot on Jim Calhoun’s coaching staff because Dave Leitao had taken the head coaching job at Northeastern, and that left the No. 3 slot at UConn open. Hobbs reached out to Moore to ask him if he would be interested.
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“Interested? I am like, ‘I would walk from Worcester State to UConn,'” Moore said. “He told me it was restricted earnings, just $16,000, and I was like, ‘if it is $1,600, I will be there.’ So, I apply, but Coach Calhoun was going to take his time making the decision, and it was down to me and one other guy, a former player of his.
“Finally, the day before practice starts, Karl told me Coach Calhoun wanted me to come in,” Moore said. “This is October 14, 1994, and I am dying. This could be the break of a lifetime if I get this opportunity. Karl said, ‘Come down, Coach wants to see you 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. He is going to make his decision or he has made his decision.'”
Moore wasn’t sure what to make of the situation, and his head was spinning with questions. Was he headed to Storrs for an interview? Was he going there for his first day on the job? Should he wear a suit or show up ready for practice? Hobbs said Calhoun hadn’t given him any clue, and that he should just rely on his instincts.
He showed up in a suit and walked into Calhoun’s office sweating bullets. The two of them sat there for two hours and talked.
UConn assistant coach Tom Moore, left, talks with Marquette head coach Shaka Smart as their teams warm up before an NCAA basketball game, Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill) (Jessica Hill/Associated Press)
“I still don’t know, and he hasn’t said anything,” Moore said. “Karl wanders in, he sits at the table, and Coach D (Howie Dickenman) comes in and sits at the table. All of a sudden, they get up on the white flip chart and they start planning practice. I am saying to myself, ‘No one has told me to leave yet. No one has told me if I have the job. I will keep my head down and start taking notes until someone tells me to leave.'”
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“Now we are talking recruiting, and next thing I know Coach D stands up, lays on the floor next to me, takes his leg and starts stretching it over his head right next to me. Now I am saying to myself, ‘Alright, if this dude is stretching like this and the other two guys are acting like nothing is going on, I guess I am part of the staff.’
“No one ever told me I was hired. I just showed up the next day and kept showing up.”
Moore told that story last week at the Connecticut Basketball Coaches Tip Off Breakfast hosted by ESPN’s Seth Greenberg at the Golf Club of Avon, where both him and Dickenman were honored with the James Jones Dean of Coaches Award.
“I’m very proud of that,” Moore said. “It has been my life’s work. I feel blessed that I found something at 20 years old that I really wanted to do.”
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He said after he realized that his teenage dream of playing for the Celtics wasn’t realistic, he set his sights on becoming a sportswriter. Along the way toward that goal, his heart pulled him instead toward coaching basketball.
Moore turned his awkward first day at UConn into a highly successful career that allowed him to be part of four national championships with the Huskies, two with Calhoun (1999, 2004) and then two more two decades later with Dan Hurley (2023, 2024).
In between his two stints as an assistant at UConn, totaling 21 seasons, he spent 10 seasons at the head coach at Quinnipiac.
He had a 162-146 (.526) record at Quinnipiac with four postseason appearances and one regular season championship. Combined with his five years at Worcester State (76-59) he won 238 games as a head coach.
UConn coaches Andre LaFleur, Jim Calhoun and Tom Moore during a game on Nov. 1, 2006. (Hearst Connecticut Media/file photo)
He was fired by Quinnipiac after the 2016-17 season and became an assistant for Hurley at the University of Rhode Island for one season and then followed him back to UConn.
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He worked as an assistant through the 2024-25 season and then took over the role as the program’s first general manager full-time this past season after performing a lot of the GM duties the previous couple seasons to keep UConn ahead of the game with respect to all the changes happening in college basketball with NIL, the transfer portal and revenue sharing.
He officially retired last month from coaching and GM duties, but he said this week that he still plans to stay involved in basketball.
“I am trying to do some color commenting on some games: low major, mid major, Northeast, national or whatever,” Moore said. “I have been bothering the people at ESPN, NBC, FOX and CBS to see if I can get my name out there. People said they will give me opportunities, and I just hope I like it and do a good enough job that they will keep giving me games.”
He said he knew he wanted to stay involved in basketball in some fashion without “this nervousness in the pit of your stomach like it has been for the past 40 years.”
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He hopes broadcasting will give him something to look forward to a couple times per week and allow him to do all the stuff he loves like study teams, put together game plans and go to shootarounds.
Some of the joy of that was lost for him in the GM position as he started dealing more with agents than players.
“I tried to do well and tried to have some enthusiasm for it, but I quickly realized I didn’t enjoy it much,” Moore said. “I had the right skillsets for some aspects of it, but others I didn’t. It wasn’t for me because the landscape is so different with all the dollar signs being thrown around.
“Some of the most important parts of your day are talking to agents, negotiating and stuff. That is not what I got into it for. The time was right.”
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At age 61, he can very happily look back on his career with great pride and contentment. He won more games than he lost in 15 years as a head coach, and he proved invaluable as an assistant.
UConn assistant coaches, Tom Moore, left, and Luke Murray during the Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Exhibition Game against Rhode Island at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., Monday, October 14, 2024. (Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media)
“For close to 30 years, I worked under two guys who are arguably two of the top 10 coaches in the history of the sport, and they were both alpha males,” Moore said. “I felt like I could fit my personality around them and sort of support what they were doing by staying in the background a little bit. That allowed me to connect with the players on a little more personal level.
“I think I was also a pretty good staff builder and connector. In the group with the kids and 4-5 coaches and support staff, I am going to be a guy that is going to keep people connected. I really like being part of a team and being somebody who can bring everybody together.”
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This article originally published at Tom Moore retired as UConn GM last month. What’s next for the four-time NCAA champion?.
