Wooster's Steve Moore won 867 games as a Division III men's basketball coach, second only to Franklin and Marshall's Glenn Robinson. Photo by Matt Dilyard, The College of Wooster

By Gordon Mann
D3hoops.com

One Saturday afternoon back in 2001, head coach Steve Moore was preparing his team to battle their archrival for the conference championship and a spot in the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Tournament.

Moore and the College of Wooster Scots traveled to the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio where Wittenberg University was hosting the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) title game. The Tigers had already beaten Wooster twice, including a 94-80 win a week earlier that snapped Wooster’s long home winning streak.

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As the story goes, Moore was feeling especially feisty, his competitive juices flowing freely as they did before every game. Addressing his team on the court where the NCAC title would be decided, Moore threw a ball across the floor and then dove after it to show his Scots how they needed to fight for every advantage. Moore slid across the floor, crashed into the chairs and broke his hand.

Adrenaline and competitive fire masked the pain, so Moore wrapped his hand and coached the fired-up Scots to a 59-56 victory over the Tigers for their third straight NCAC tournament title and sixth in 10 years.

Twenty-five years later, sitting at home on a quieter Saturday morning near the Wooster campus, Moore is asked about this memorable pregame performance.

“We did have a walkthrough before the game, and they had beaten us twice that year. I did dive across the floor, but I didn’t break my hand and players were motivated,” says Moore.

You know how it is, Moore demurs. People tell stories, legends grow and the truth gets fuzzy along the way.

Doug Cline, who was Moore’s long-time assistant and then his successor as Wooster head coach, has another story.

“We had one recruit who came here without seeing us play. His dad told me that Coach Moore was really nice, but he couldn’t see how he could get his players excited for the game. I told him that will not be a problem.” The father watched Moore on the sidelines, and his concerns quickly disappeared.

“He’s the most intense person I’ve ever been around in my life,” notes Cline. “It’s a little like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

People tell these stories about Moore’s intensity and competitive fire with respect and affection. They also tell these stories because Moore is unfailingly calm and understated off the court, and they want you to know there’s another side to him.

They want you to know that the man who built Wooster into one of Division III’s premier programs with an emphasis on hard work and respect wanted to win just as badly as the coach whose passion boiled a lot closer to the surface.

They want you to know there are two sides to Steve Moore, and they love them both. 

From Ohio to Pennsylvania, and back again

Steve Moore (far right) started his coaching career as as assistant on the 1977 Wittenberg national championship team.

Moore spent 33 seasons and won 780 games as Wooster’s head coach, but his college basketball career started on the other side of the Woo-Witt rivalry. Moore grew up in Monroeville, Ohio and enrolled at Wittenberg in the early 1970s.

“I wasn’t recruited to Wittenberg. I just went there mainly because my friend who was two years older than me went there to play football. A high school coach told me I could play there, and I doubted it because I saw Wittenberg play in the College Division tournament and they were really good.”

Before 1974, the NCAA split its membership into two divisions, with smaller schools competing in the College Division. Wittenberg basketball won the national championship at that level in 1961, finished second in 1963, and made the Tournament again in 1969 when Moore was in high school.

Moore made Wittenberg’s varsity team as a sophomore and was a senior captain on the Tigers’ 1973-74 team that went 22-4 under head coach Bob Hamilton. Fifty years later, Moore can remember details of the final games of that season, including the 59-55 overtime win over Evansville that sent the Tigers to the regional championship.

“Those men meant a lot to me and mean a lot to me and influenced my coaching,” Moore told the Springfield News-Sun years later. “I was a very average college player, but I had great teammates.”

Moore also has very fond memories of his college coaches, Hamilton and his assistant Larry Hunter, who came to Wittenberg after two seasons as an assistant at Marietta and a successful playing career at Ohio University.

“Coach Hamilton was an outstanding coach and the reason I got into coaching. He's the reason I’m the type of coach that I am. He was very knowledgeable about fundamentals. I learned the game from him.”

After graduating from Wooster, Moore decided to enroll at Hunter’s alma mater and earned his master’s degree in physical education from Ohio University. Then, when Hamilton left Wittenberg to become Navy's head coach, Hunter became the Tigers’ head coach and hired Moore as his assistant.

Hamilton left the Tigers in excellent shape, having just lost to Scranton in overtime in the 1976 Division III national championship game to Scranton. Wittenberg returned to the national semifinals in Hunter's first season and returned the favor, beating the Royals in overtime. Then the Tigers defeated SUNY Oneonta for the 1977 national championship.

Moore spent five season at Wittenberg as the assistant men’s basketball and the Tigers' head men’s soccer coach, which was a school tradition. The Tigers went 119-24 during that period and made another trip to the national semifinals in 1980.

A few hours east in Allentown, Pennsylvania, another ‘berg was looking for a new coach.

Muhlenberg College had conducted two searches to fill their head coaching vacancy, but the College’s president turned away the finalist both times. Muhlenberg’s Athletic Director contacted Steve Bankston, who was the head coach at Baldwin Wallace in Berea, Ohio, and asked if he had any ideas. Bankston suggested Muhlenberg reach out to the assistant coach at conference rival Wittenberg,

Moore interviewed for the position and was hired very late in the offseason, with the academic year already underway. Unlike Wittenberg, where Moore stepped into a successful program, the Mules had struggled before Moore arrived, going 7-40 over the prior two seasons. Muhlenberg got some momentum in Moore’s first season, despite one especially low-scoring loss, and equaled the prior years’ win total with a 7-18 mark. That made it easier to recruit players to Allentown, and Muhlenberg went 16-9 in Moore’s second season giving the Mules their first winning record in a decade.

In the early 1980s, Muhlenberg played in the sprawling Middle Atlantic Conference whose 25 members are now spread across multiple conferences. The MAC included multiple national tournament mainstays, and the Mules often needed to beat several of them just to earn a Tournament spot.

In 1985, Moore led Muhlenberg to a 19-7 record (including a non-conference loss at Wooster) and a first-place finish in the MAC Southwest. The Mules beat Widener in the MAC playoffs but lost to Washington College and missed the NCAA Tournament. Widener got an at-large bid and reached the 1985 national semifinals.

The next year, the Mules won the MAC Southwest again, this time sharing first with the Genn Robinson-led Franklin and Marshall. Muhlenberg defeated Widener again in the 1986 MAC playoffs, but lost to F&M in the title game. Forty years later, Robinson and Moore are Division III’s two winningest coaches with 1,834 wins combined. And that 20-7 finish remains Muhlenberg’s best as a Division III program.

Moore was happy in Allentown but, just as a head coaching opportunity took him from Ohio to Pennsylvania, another opportunity took him back.

This time it was the College of Wooster and Athletic Director Al Van Wie that were looking for fresh leadership. The Scots had been mired around .500 since Van Wie led them to multiple 20-win seasons in the late 1970s. Once again, the Wooster opportunity arose late in the offseason, and Moore was already preparing for another season at Muhlenberg when he got the call from Wooster in August 1987.              

“School had already started at Muhlenberg, and we had had our first meeting [as a team] when I interviewed at Wooster. It was very difficult to leave Muhlenberg. We had great young men. I liked the college a lot,” Moore recalls with emotion in his voice. “But my wife and I are from the same hometown and at that time my kids were young, and their grandparents were still alive.”

So, Moore returned to Ohio and started his program building process again, this time at Wooster. 

"Guys at Wooster have always gotten better"

Wooster celebrates its come-from-behind victory over Williams in the 2011 national semifinals.

Van Wie didn’t just have a job for Moore. He also had a starting point for rebuilding the program.

“He said the first thing you should do is call Erich Riebe.”

Riebe was a versatile player at Waynesdale High School in Wayne County (Ohio) where he was first-team all-state as a junior. He had basketball pedigree – his father Mel played for the Boston Celtics – and scholarship opportunities. He had a stellar senior season, earning Player of the Year honors from the Wooster Daily Record and Akron Beacon Journal.

He also had a connection to Wooster. His mother was secretary to the College’s president and so, when Moore put on the full court press in recruiting, Reibe enrolled at the school. Meanwhile, the Scots finished Moore’s first season as head coach with a 14-11 record, equaling their highest win total in the previous eight seasons.

Four decades and 700-plus wins later, Moore calls Reibe “the key player to turning the program around.”

He averaged 10.4 points and shot 48 percent from three as a freshman, earning Honorable Mention all-conference honors. Fellow freshman Stan Aukamp, who stood 6'7", added 8.1 points and shot 59 percent from the field. The Scots went 21-7 that season and, two seasons later, they went 25-4 and 11-0 in the NCAC. Riebe and Aukamp combined for nearly 32 points per game, and Wooster reached the NCAA Tournament.

Wooster returned to the NCAA Tournament in 1992 with Reibe and Aukamp as seniors and 6'5" freshman forward Doug Cline whom Moore had also recruited from Wayne County. Cline had been a two-sport star at Northwestern High School when Moore recruited him to Wooster.

“He was an immediate impact player. He was our sixth man and then became the starter,” Moore recalls. “He could shoot from outside but never would because he wanted to shoot 60 percent.”

Cline finished his career with just under 1,400 points and, yes, a 61 percent shooting percentage. The Scots won three conference tournaments, made the NCAA Tournament three times, and went 91-21 during his four years.

After graduating in 1995, Cline became the Scots' Junior Varsity head coach and then Moore’s assistant, a position he held for more than 20 years. Like Moore two decades earlier, Cline knew he wanted to be a head coach, but he also wanted to stay at Wooster.

“Wooster is a special place. It’s a place where you can win the national championship, and there are not a lot of places out there that are like that,” says Cline.

Wooster was a perennial 20-game winner and NCAA Tournament team throughout the 1990s, but the Scots didn’t make a serious run at a national championship until 2003. That season, the Scots rolled through the regular season with a 26-2, 15-1 record in conference, its lone loss coming to Wittenberg.

The Scots received a first-round bye in the NCAA Tournament, held off John Carroll in the second round, and then downed Scranton and Ramapo at home on their way to the national semifinals. Senior forward Bryan Nelson scored 27 points but got hurt late in the Scots’ win over Ramapo. Despite entering the weekend on crutches, Nelson scored 29 points and grabbed nine rebounds in the national semifinals as the Scots lost to Williams, 74-72 in overtime.

Four seasons later, the Scots made another deep Tournament run, this time led by senior forward Tom Port and junior guard James Cooper. Wooster went on the road to Western New York and came from behind to defeat Brockport in the sectional finals. That earned the Scots another trip to the 2007 national semifinals where they fell to Amherst.

After another four years, Wooster made its third and final trip to the national semifinals under Moore. This time, the Scots’ top player was guard Ian Franks. When Franks visited Wooster as a high school senior, Moore and his staff thought the shy youngster was in his first or second year of high school. They had not recruited him, so Franks walked onto the team and played junior varsity.

Over time, Franks listened, learned, and improved, earning himself a spot on the varsity team. Then he worked out and grew, listened and learned, and improved some more. In Franks' senior season, Wooster won its first 20 games, beat Wittenberg for the NCAC regular season and tournament titles, and won four games at home in the NCAA Tournament's first two weekends. 

In our Final four preview, Brian Falzarano wrote of Franks:

“...Wooster's most unlikely All-American is all about his teammates. In addition to sharing a Rubik's Cube competition with some of them – he proudly boasts of winning a timed ‘race,’ solving the puzzle in 70 seconds --  he also shares a house with six fellow Fighting Scots, where he says, 'We squeeze in here, but we sacrifice size of rooms to be able to hang out with each other all the time.'"

Like his head coach, Franks might have been understated off the court, but he was fierce on it, scoring over 1600 points and earning two All-American honors.

“[Coach Moore] gets guys to compete. He wills them to win. Guys at Wooster have always gotten better,” Cline explains. “The whole philosophy is that we will take lesser players that are better people, and we will beat teams. He’s a tremendous teacher of the game.”

Wooster met Williams again in the 2011 national semifinals, and Franks scored 24 points to rally the Scots past the Ephs and into the national championship game. Franks played well in that game too (22 points, six rebounds, four assists), but St. Thomas (Minn.) built a big halftime lead and held off Wooster for the title.

Ferocity on the court, family off it

Wooster dedicated its basketball court to Steve Moore in 2024. Photo by Matt Dilyard, The College of Wooster

Lots of eye-popping numbers describe Wooster men’s basketball during Moore’s career.

The Scots made the NCAA Tournament 28 times, won 35 games in that event, and reached three national semifinals.

Wooster has made 255 appearances in the D3hoops.com Top 25 poll, the most of any program until Washington U. passed the Scots last season.

Wooster won 17 NCAC tournament titles, by far the most of any conference member, with the last one coming in Moore’s final season when the Scots beat Wittenberg once again for the title.

More than numbers and accolades, Moore’s career is defined by the two sides of his personality. On the court, the Scots were relentless and tough, especially at home. They were well prepared and fundamentally sound because Moore required nothing less.

“He never took anyone lightly. He prepared really well,” says Cline.  “Practices were harder than the games. Very intense. Very competitive.”

But demanding the most of his players did not stray into abusing them. Moore did not believe you had to insult someone to get the most out of them, nor did he believe in insulting the opponent for cheap motivation. “He’s going to coach you. He’s going to make you better. He’s going to be there for you when things are going well and when they aren’t.”

Moore and Cline have been there for each other for four decades, and they still are.

“He’s like a second father to me,” Cline says. “I was blessed – I have a tremendous [biological] father. But he’s meant so much to me. He’s a mentor, a best friend. It’s all about family. That’s why this program is so special. All the guys who played here, they come back.”

When Moore finished his career, the College welcomed back hundreds of former players and their families to celebrate the occasion, including Reibe who has remained active with the program as an alum. Moore has also remained active after retirement.

“He’s still heavily involved in the program and comes to practice to everyday,” Cline explains. “He’s not afraid to tell you if you did something wrong, like a dad does. But he’s also there to pick you up. He’s there to encourage you.”

When asked to explain the two sides of his personality – the fierce competitor on the court and the family-oriented leader off it – Moore thinks back to Larry Hunter, who gave him his first collegiate coaching job.

“When I got the job, I was worried because I didn’t want to coach against him,” Moore explains. As competitive as Moore was, competing against his old coach was not something he relished. As it turned out, they would not have to compete against each other very long because Hunter left Wittenberg to become the head coach at Ohio University.

“I’m not so competitive in other things – if I play cards I don’t really care if I win. I played one-hand handball and was competitive in that. Coach Hunter taught me how to be competitive. Larry was a great person.”

Coach Moore’s voice trails off here. He misses his friend– his coach – who passed away in 2018. He’s grateful to all the players who’ve described him as a second father. He’s thankful for the relationships he’s built.

In that moment, the two sides of Steve Moore – the competitor and the loyal leader -- come together.