Tom Moore spent more than three decades watching UConn men’s basketball grow from the inside, and now he’s stepping away just as the program is entering another new phase.
Moore will officially retire on Sept. 1, ending a run that began on Jim Calhoun’s staff in 1994 and eventually included helping build the Huskies into national champions in 1999 and 2004. He later returned alongside Dan Hurley to help re-establish the program’s base, then shifted into a general manager role that mattered plenty in the last two roster builds.
As GM, Moore was part of assembling the 2025-26 team that got back to the national championship game for the third time in four years. He also had a hand in shaping the current 2026-27 roster, which is expected to contend again. But Hurley made it clear that Moore’s next move is more than just a personnel change - it’s the end of a basketball lifer filling a job that fit his coaching background.
“Tom, with me at Rhody and just helping me kind of go and transition into this job here and just all of the great advice, just a veteran coach, (he) helped us so much in identifying players and in building the program. We’ll miss Tom. The players are gonna miss him, the coaches are gonna miss him, everyone’s gonna miss T-Moore,” Hurley said.
Now the search shifts to someone different. Hurley said UConn is looking for a “true” general manager, someone who can handle the early identification work while the coaching staff stays locked in on the team already in Storrs.
“For us, (we’ll be looking for) more of a true general manager in the sense of, we don’t do a lot of recruiting from October through the end of our season, we pretty much don’t do any recruiting. I don’t even think I went and saw Junior (County) or Colben (Landrew) play. We’re the type of program that just, we coach our players, we coach our team, we’re not off on planes looking for the next player, we coach the people here,” Hurley said.
He added that the job will likely center on getting ahead of the next wave.
“So I think we’re looking probably for someone that is gonna identify that next class for us a little bit earlier. We’ll be able to get out internationally and then obviously prepare us with different scenarios once the portal opens for the way that we like to use the portal.”
While UConn sorts out its future front-office setup, the program is still drawing attention on the recruiting trail. One of its top 2027 targets, Malachi Jordan, was in Connecticut this week for the Ta’Quan Zimmerman Elite 20 Invitational at Shelton High on Tuesday night.
Jordan, a 6-foot-7, 225-pound small forward at Prolific Prep in Florida, is ranked No. 4 at his position in the class by 247Sports. UConn’s coaches could not attend because it was a dead period, but several current Huskies were there courtside, including Silas Demary Jr., Jayden Ross, Solo Ball, Colben Landrew and Jaye Nash.
Jordan listed UConn among his top eight schools, along with Alabama, Kansas, Ohio State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, USC and Washington. He has reportedly set an October visit to Storrs.
The Huskies also remain in the mix for several other highly rated prospects, including Demarcus Henry, Cayden Daughtry, Asa Montgomery, King Gibson and Chase Lumpkin.
And there was more recognition for Alex Karaban, whose college career keeps piling up honors even after his time in Storrs ended. More than seven weeks after being drafted 29th overall by the Sacramento Kings, Karaban was named the Big East’s 2025-26 Sport Excellence Award winner for men’s basketball. He will not be returning to UConn.
Karaban left as the winningest player in program history, and he was one of three Huskies honored by the league. Sol Simone earned the award for field hockey, and Anna Connors was recognized in women’s indoor track and field.
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Alex Karaban Adds Another Honor To UConns Championship Legacy
Alex Karabans UConn career already had the kind of rsum that puts him in rare company, and now it has another line to go with it. The former Huskies star has been named the 2025-26 winner of the BIG EAST Sport Excellence Award for mens basketball, an honor that recognizes academic achievement, athletic performance and community service.
It is a fitting capstone for a player who finished his run as a two-time national champion while leaving his mark in the record book. Karaban also earned an economics degree and collected multiple academic honors along the way, a combination that speaks to how much he meant to the program on and off the floor. [Read more 🡒]