March 7, 2017: After ten years at the helm of the Quinnipiac men’s basketball team, Quinnipiac Athletics announced that head coach Tom Moore has been fired, following his team’s first round exit in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament.
With one season left in his contract, Moore leaves Quinnipiac with a 162-150 overall record and four postseason appearances, as well as having reached the NEC or MAAC semifinals four times.
Rewind to March 8, 2007: A decade nearly to the day before, Joe DeSantis is relieved of his position as the Quinnipiac men’s basketball head coach after guiding the Bobcats through the transition from Division II to Division I and compiling an overall record of 118-188. In 2000, DeSantis was named Northeast Conference Coach of the Year after leading the Bobcats to an 18-10 record. He had spent 11 years at Quinnipiac.
DeSantis is replaced by Moore who had 13 years experience as an assistant coach at UConn under Jim Calhoun, becoming the seventh Calhoun assistant to become a head coach of his own program.
In 2007, Moore was already well known for his success as a recruiter and as Jim Calhoun’s right-hand man. He came in with big time credentials and a vision to put Quinnipiac on the map.
He had immediate success in Hamden. The Bobcats won the NEC regular season title in 2010, but lost a heartbreaker in the championship game to Robert Morris by two points.
Moore was making a significant impact both on and off the court. He made it a priority to seek out an academic advisor just for the team, emphasizing the importance of being a “student-athlete.”
Three years later, the basketball program switched from the NEC to the MAAC.
“The Bobcats of Quinnipiac bring a strong athletics tradition to the MAAC,” Dr. Eugene J. Cornacchia, President of Saint Peter’s University and the MAAC Council of Presidents, said in the 2013 press release as Quinnipiac joined the new conference.
“The University’s academic prowess is well known [and] they are a perfect fit for a conference like the MAAC which has always emphasized the ‘student’ portion of the term ‘student-athlete.'”
That February, it appeared that Quinnipiac could win its first MAAC Championship. Redshirt graduate student Umar Shannon, who had transferred to Quinnipiac from Saint Francis University earlier in the year, was a star for the Bobcats averaging 14.3 points per game.
The Bobcats’ worst fears were realized, however, when he suffered a knee injury playing Siena at home. The Bobcats lost by two, snapping a seven game winning streak in the final week of the regular season.
Without Shannon, the Bobcats managed to beat Niagara in the quarterfinals but lost to Manhattan in the 2014 MAAC semifinals.
“I still to this day think if we hadn’t lost Umar, we might have been in the championship game that night,” Moore said in his final game against Niagara.
Moore also faced problems the following year. Transfer Giovanni McLean was supposed to join Tom Moore’s squad at the start of the 2014-15 season, but was ruled ineligible by the NCAA due to transcript fraud.
Alongside a senior-heavy team, McLean perhaps would have given the Bobcats another chance at the MAAC title. Instead, the team lost to No. 11 seed Marist in the opening round of the conference playoffs.
Greg Amodio, Quinnipiac’s Athletic Director, was hired in 2015 primarily to enhance Quinnipiac’s success in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Upon hire, he told the New Haven Register that it was his goal to make the institution synonymous with the conference.
“When people think about the MAAC, we want the first thing for them to think about is Quinnipiac,” Amodio said.
In the last two years, Moore took a different approach in recruiting his players. When his last three recruiting classes struggled in conference play, he switched his focus to bringing in junior college players to shape a new identity for his team.
He relied heavily on junior college transfers Donovan Smith and Danny Harris in the 2015-16 season, two players who seemed to help the team adjust into the “tougher” MAAC. A 9-21 record kept Tom Moore once again from a conference trophy.
2016: Enter Peter Kiss and Mikey Dixon. The two freshmen standouts combined have won a total of 10 MAAC Rookie of the Week Awards.
Averaging 13.3 and 16.5 points per game respectively, the young players have added freshness to the program that matches the conference’s competition. By the time Kiss and Dixon are juniors or seniors, Quinnipiac could very well be at the top of the MAAC.
Tom Moore may have just been starting to turn things around.
Building a dominating team in a new conference takes time. Switching conferences four years ago, Moore has had roughly the same amount of experience in the MAAC as several other opponent’s coaches.
But were his problems a stark failure compared to his conference colleagues?
Canisius head coach Jim Baron (2012-2016), never made it to the MAAC Championship game in his time as head coach, nor have current coaches Kevin Baggett (Rider), Chris Casey (Niagara) or Mike Maker (Marist).
Quinnipiac is on an active search for a new head coach, on the precipice of a new era for the team. Even as some candidates may come from within the conference, the national search for a new coach is still to come.
