Tom Moore, a key part of the UConn men’s basketball team’s success for 21 seasons over two different tenures and several job titles, will be calling an end to his career.
Moore boasts four national championship rings as an assistant coach, two under Jim Calhoun and two under Dan Hurley. He initially joined Calhoun’s staff in 1994 and spent 13 seasons as an assistant and key recruiter, helping the Huskies to national titles in 1999 and 2004. In 2007, he headed down to Quinnipiac to take over the head coaching reins and lasted 10 seasons.
Moore was fired from Quinnipiac in 2017 and joined Hurley’s staff at Rhode Island. The following season, he followed Hurley to UConn and was an assistant on the 2023 and 2024 repeat national title teams.
Prior to last season, Moore took over the program’s newly-created general manager position, in which he handled name, image and likeness (NIL) and transfer portal issues, among many other duties.
Moore, 61, was simply tired of the day-to-day grind that the new world of college athletics has unleashed. For example, barely an hour after the Huskies had lost to Michigan in the national championship game, the transfer portal opened. Throughout the entire flight back to Connecticut, Hurley asked Moore about the amount of money the program might have for this player, for that player. The next day, less than 24 hours after the championship game, the entire staff was back at the Werth Family Champions Center.
And they’d reconvene for each of the next 35 days, all just to get the top of the 2026-27 roster in order. Current players had to go through re-negotiations, contingency plans had to be hatched, huge roster decisions over a five or six-week period … all of it a few weeks behind most other programs thanks to the Huskies’ long NCAA tourney run.
That’s not a reflection on Hurley or the pressures of working on his staff. It’s simply the realities of the college basketball world, practically a 24/7 job these days. In fact, Moore was hesitant to take the job in the first place, but acquiesced to Hurley’s wishes.
So, who will UConn look for to replace Moore? It’s not likely to be Andrew Hurley, Dan’s son, who has expressed an interested in becoming a GM some day. He should remain with the program in a similar capacity, however.
More likely, it’ll be a young person with NBA experience, someone willing to get out, travel, and hopefully boost the Huskies’ foreign presence, which isn’t overly strong right now.
Of course, it remains to be seen what type of role Hurley will want for his new GM. Will it be dealing with donors and boosters, raising money? Will it be dealing with David Benedict and the administration? Dealing with the Big East (scheduling, referees, etc.)? Analytics? Roster construction?
These are all the types of things Tom Moore has had to deal with for the past couple of seasons. Now, he’s off to retirement, a good amount of money saved up between him and his wife, Eileen. He’ll likely do some TV work to keep busy, but his coaching (and GM) career will be all over.
And so will his long, championship-filled tenure with UConn.
This article originally published at Tom Moore retiring after 21 seasons, four national titles with UConn men’s basketball.
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