When Ronald Moore became an NCAA Tournament hero in 2009, TikTok and Instagram had not yet been invented. The iPhone was in only its second iteration, the 3G, and the first one had been launched just two years before.
You could certainly become a national sensation, but it would have been with a highlight reel play instead of a viral one.
Yet for all that has changed in technology since then — to say nothing of all that has changed in college basketball — some things never go out of style. A mid-major toppling a Big Ten beast in March is certainly one of them.
It was news enough that Siena had taken Ohio State to overtime, and all the better since the game was in Dayton, just over an hour from Columbus. With 9.1 seconds left in the extra session, the Saints trailed the Buckeyes, 65-62.
Moore, a Plymouth Meeting native who was then a junior guard from Plymouth-Whitemarsh High, took the inbounds pass and raced up the floor. When he neared the three-point arc, he faked left on Ohio State’s P.J. Hill and dribbled right. Hill bit, Moore let fly, and the shot was inch-perfect.
As CBS announcers Verne Lundqist and Bill Raftery joined the crowd in delirium, Ohio State’s Jon Diebler shot a potential game-winner off the rim. A second overtime beckoned.
“The little guy that could!” Raftery exclaimed over replays of 6-foot-tall Moore’s three, including a wide-eyed Siena coach Fran McCaffery and an even more wide-eyed bench.
With 19 seconds left in the second OT, future 76er Evan Turner’s gutsy layup put Ohio State ahead, 72-71. Moore again took the inbounds pass, this time dribbling left, then toward the middle.
He passed to Edwin Ubiles, who gave a pump fake, a dribble, and a pass back out of a triple team to the man of the hour. The clock read 5.4 when Moore let fly.
“Three-pointer … Yes!” Lundquist roared, with Raftery landing an “Oh!” right on top of his partner.
Then came the moment that really sticks in many fans’ minds: Raftery’s “Onions! Double order!” exclamation. The sport’s king of rhetorical flourishes had never taken his most famous line to that level, and it’s still rare.
Had Turner made the running jumper he missed on Ohio State’s last possession, perhaps all of this would have been forgotten. But the ball rolled around the rim and out, and the nation had a new star.
‘A great moment in time’
Countless fans of Cinderella have memories of Moore’s heroics. So does Siena’s all-time assists leader, now 37 and settled back in his hometown as an assistant coach at Penn.
“They’re always vivid,” he said in an interview this week. “I’m blessed to have had that moment in my basketball career. And every March, it’s always a flashback, whether someone brings it to my attention or I catch a glimpse of it in some of the highlight reels they play of March Madness.”
And he still gets “the same feeling every time I see it — just because of what it meant to not only the university, but to myself, to my teammates. So it’s always a great moment in time when I flash back and look at those shots.”
McCaffery, now at the helm of Penn, hasn’t forgotten either, just as he hasn’t forgotten many of his great moments as a player and a coach. But he offered a reminder of something those fans might have forgotten: Siena was a ninth seed that year, and this was its second straight tournament with a win.
“In the moment you’re just thinking about adjustments, personnel — what are we in defensively? What are they in? Are we in the bonus?” McCaffery recalled. “With that team, it was easy to trust your guys. It was a veteran group, they were really smart, and they were incredibly mentally tough. So you can play Ohio State in Ohio [and] nobody’s rattled at all.”
McCaffery also recalled what followed: “That was as good a locker room celebration as I can remember.”
After graduating in 2010, Moore went on to play professional basketball in Europe for 11 years, for teams in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, and France. He retired from the court in 2021, then returned to his hometown to run a youth basketball outfit.
“I felt that it was something that was my calling, just to kind of help the next generation and give all the knowledge that I possibly can to help those kids try to help achieve their goals and their dreams in the game of basketball,” he said. “It’s brought me so much that I wanted to be able to help someone do the same.”
Then, last spring, his old college coach returned to his hometown, and his alma mater. When McCaffery hired Moore to the staff at Penn, some people of a certain age reacted: “That Ronald Moore?”
Yes, that Ronald Moore. He and his old coach had stayed in close touch over the years. They traded text messages, and when time allowed, Moore would visit McCaffery at Iowa, where the coach moved in 2010. Their families got to know each other, too.
“It’s just the type of person Fran is, man,” Moore said. “I think a lot of people get a misconception of when he’s out here yelling and trying to motivate guys on the floor, but off the court, he’s always been an open book, and someone who would be approachable to talk about anything.”
Hiring him made ‘perfect sense’
McCaffery had long felt Moore would make a good coach someday, and had told him so.
“I always thought about having him on my staff no matter where I was, but it makes perfect sense in Philadelphia, where we’re both from,” McCaffery said.
Now Moore’s experiences make him even better-suited for the job.
“He’s played at an incredibly high level internationally,” McCaffery said. “He’s played for some really good coaches — played for some coaches who probably weren’t very good, and that’s part of the growth in this profession. … But his knowledge is just next-level of the game. So the coaching side of it is easy.”
When the offer came to join Penn’s staff, Moore felt that “it just was a full-circle moment.” And he was ready.
“Many people have asked me, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about getting into college coaching?’” he said. “I had plenty of friends that coached at the college level, so I knew what it entails, but I didn’t really want to move around. So him coming back to Penn and getting that phone call, it kind of just seemed like a no-brainer.”
On top of that, he now has a key to the Palestra, his city’s basketball shrine. He appreciates that too with one of its annual rituals played on Saturday’s. The 61-60 win over rival Princeton, ended an 8-year, 14-game skid an offered a measure of Penn’s progress this season.
“You soak it all in when you’re in this place and it’s quiet and nobody’s around — you kind of can stand back and look at it from a different lens,” Moore said. “Having been able to play here as a college player, play here as a high school player, knowing what it means to the city of Philadelphia, and just its history in general, it’s a special place to be able to work at and come in every day.”
