City of Basketball Love

By David Comer
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The fact that Ronald Moore goes to work at the Palestra is not lost on the first-year assistant coach with the Penn men’s basketball team.

“It’s definitely pretty cool,” Moore said. “Sometimes, when I walk through there and it’s quiet and nobody is in there, it’s surreal. It’s such an iconic place.”

Moore has experienced the Palestra - which will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2027 and is one of college basketball’s most historic gyms - in many different capacities. 

He sat in the Palestra bleachers as a little kid in the mid-1990s to watch his older brother, Chuck Moore, play for Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in the District I semifinals. Then in 2006, just like Chuck, he played for PW at the Palestra in the District I semifinals. Ronald played there again, this time as a senior at Siena, in November of 2009 during the Philly Hoop Group Classic.

Now, he is at the Palestra nearly every day, working for Penn’s first-year head coach, Fran McCaffery, who was Moore’s coach at Siena, trying to impart on the Quakers the wisdom he learned while playing point guard at PW, Siena and during an 11-year professional career in Europe.

“It’s a great opportunity to continue to learn from Fran now as a coach versus a player,” Moore said. “I’m enjoying it. I like connecting with the kids. I like sharing all the knowledge I have with them.”

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Ronald Moore (above) is in his first year as an assistant coach with the Penn men's basketball program. (Photo courtesy Penn Athletics)

Moore’s basketball knowledge has been extracted from a life in the game that has taken him all over the world. The root of it, though, can at least partially be traced back to Colonial Elementary School, which was PW’s home court in the 1990s when Chuck played for the Colonials and where Ronald would go to watch his big brother’s games. However, at those games, Ronald, who would later go on to play for PW in that same gym, was more interested in playing basketball than watching it.

“He would be in the gym and on the side baskets during games bouncing and shooting the ball,” recalled Chuck, who is nine years older than Ronald. “The referee would have to go over and tell him to hold the ball.”

Chuck - who graduated from PW in 1997 and played college hoops at Seton Hall and Vanderbilt before embarking on a pro career in Austria and the United States that was cut short by knee injuries - said he saw something special in his little brother from a young age.

“Right away, you knew my brother was going to be a player,” Chuck said. “He just had that tenacity.”

By the time Ronald was a freshman at PW, long-time coach Jim Donofrio had taken notice.

“He just had a way with the ball,” Donofrio said. “I think with him being undersized growing up a lot of folks would look at me and say, ‘I’m not sure he’s the guy.’ I would look at those people and say, ‘Oh, no, he’s the guy.’”

By the middle of his freshman year at PW, Moore had taken over as the team’s starting point guard. Donofrio said that at the time Moore was all of 5-foot-8 and 108 pounds.

“That’s a slight exaggeration,” said Chuck, now an assistant coach at PW. “Coach D always exaggerates about height and weight, but he’s not too far off. He was little. He had a skinny frame. He impressed coach right away, and he put the ball in my brother’s hands right away.”

Ronald Moore (fourth from left) and the Colonials got to experience the Palestra when he was in high school. (Photo courtesy George Wadlin/Plymouth Whitemarsh basketball)

Ronald scored 1,000 points for the Colonials and became one of the best point guards in PW history.

“Once Ronald took the reins, I never had to use a press offense for four years,” Donofrio said. “He had the ability to see the game as a true point guard and an old school point guard while also being a modern point guard.”

In the winter of 2006, McCaffery, a point guard during his playing days at Penn who was then in his first season at Siena, came to see Moore play in person during a December of 2005 game at the Colonial Elementary School.

“He had gotten word that I wasn’t committed and was kind of surprised I was still available,” Moore said. “He came down and saw the game and offered me on the spot. I had like eight assists at halftime, and that was all he needed to see.”

Moore visited Siena - located in Loudonville, NY, just outside of Albany, and approximately four hours and 250 miles from Plymouth Meeting - and was sold.

“The thing that jumped out most for me and my family was just his family values, and that really hit it off with my mom,” Moore said. “I also had an opportunity to come in and play and having Fran to learn from - he played the same position I played - was also a big bonus.”

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At Siena, Moore developed his game and his relationship with McCaffery. As a freshman, Moore was listed at 5-foot-11 and 148 pounds, but he became the starting point guard on a team that finished 20-12. He averaged 7.4 points and 4.9 assists per game that year and was learning what it took to be a Division I point guard.

“From the outside looking in, from the fan’s perspective, man, Fran was chewing my brother out,” Chuck said. “Regardless of what the outside world saw, you knew behind closed doors their relationship was tight.”

By the time Moore’s career at Siena was over, the Saints had four consecutive 20-win seasons, a 97-38 record, three MAAC championships and three NCAA tournament appearances. 

There were plenty of individual highlights along the way, too. He scored more than 1,000 points, graduated as the program’s all-time assist leader, was a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award - which is given to the college basketball’s top point guard - led all of Division I with 7.7 assists per game as a senior, when he was listed at 6-foot and 156 pounds, and earned enough MAAC regular-season and postseason awards to fill a trophy case. 

He also had a memorable performance in the first round of the 2009 NCAA tournament, when he made a game-tying three-pointer in the first overtime and a game-winning trey in the second overtime in an upset win over Ohio State.

“It’s hard to top that one,” said Moore, who was inducted into the Siena Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.

Ronald (left) and Chuck Moore (right) started the Moore Brothers basketball organization to work with area youth. (Photo courtesy George Wadlin/Plymouth Whitemarsh basketball)

After Siena, Moore embarked on a pro basketball career, just like several family members - his older brother, Chuck; his cousin, John Salmons, who spent 13 years in the NBA; and his uncle, Jimmie Baker, who played in the ABA. Moore played for more than a decade overseas in countries such as Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Ukraine, Croatia and France.

“I think just traveling around Europe for anybody is life-changing,” Moore said. “Just indulging in other people’s culture and getting to do that a number of times and making friends from these countries is special. On an off day in Italy going to Rome or Milan or in France going to Paris is just surreal, and I didn’t take those opportunities for granted.”

Moore retired from playing professionally in 2021 and returned home to the place where his playing career started to begin a new career. This time as a coach.

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Ronald and Chuck formed Moore Brothers Basketball, which according to its website was established “to provide a platform for youth of all ages to achieve excellence in the sport of basketball.” Moore Brothers Basketball offers a variety of training sessions, camps, AAU opportunities and other basketball-related events.

Ronald also started to coach the 8th grade team at PW.

“He got the bug,” Donofrio said. “You never know who is going to jump into this world, especially if you’re a pro. For guys like Ronald - who are pros - all they know is the game, and they want to be in the game. Being a point guard you have to be the coach on the floor, so if anyone is going to be a coach, it’s going to be a point guard. 

“He has absorbed so much information from people who take the game seriously,” he added. “It’s kind of a no-brainer that he’d be good at it. There’s a quote: ‘People don’t know how much you know until they know how much they care.’ And that’s Ronald.”

Moore was enjoying coaching both at PW and with Moore Brothers Basketball. He had gone from being called one of his many nicknames - “Rizz,” “Maestro,” “Gingerbread Man” - to being called “coach.”

“I was coaching on a different scale with younger kids, and I had fallen in love with that,” Moore said. “And then this opportunity came across.”

McCaffery was hired by Penn as its head coach on March 27, 2025, less than a month after Iowa dismissed him following 15 seasons there.

Moore remained close with McCaffery and McCaffery’s family after he was done playing for him at Siena.

“We always stayed in touch,” Moore said. “He came to my wedding. I was close with his kids. We always would talk. He’s been trying to get me into college coaching.”

So, after McCaffery was hired at Penn, Moore contacted him - not for an assistant coaching job for himself but one for a friend.

“He told me he was thinking of calling me,” Moore said. “The conversation kind of escalated. I sat on it for 48 hours and spoke it over with my family. A week later, I’m going down to Penn to finalize the deal.”

So Moore, in April of 2025, at the age of 36, was officially named an assistant coach at Penn.

“He moved back to the Philadelphia area following his retirement and is very well known in the city's basketball community,” McCaffery said in a statement after Moore was hired. “Ronald has a tremendous personality, and I get excited when I think about him working with our players on a daily basis. I believe he will be excellent in every capacity of coaching, from recruiting and scouting to player development."

Moore (seated, far right) joined Fran McCafferty's (standing) staff in the 2025 offseason. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Moore wasn’t looking for a college coaching job, but the chance to work with McCaffery and remain close to his home in the Plymouth Meeting area - where he lives with his wife, Kristin, and their 6-year-old son, Cameron, and 4-year-old daughter, Ava - was too much too pass up

“I enjoy being back alongside Fran,” Moore said. “I think it’s pretty much the same old Fran, but he’s evolved. Like any coach, as they go on in their career, they continue to tweak and mold.  It’s the same old Fran, but he’s adapted with the times. He’s been in this business forever, but it’s the same old Fran.

“It’s a great opportunity to continue to learn from Fran now as a coach versus a player,” Moore added. “I’m enjoying it. I like connecting with the kids. I like sharing all the knowledge I have with the kids.”

Not everything has been perfect. Penn, which is 9-9 overall and 2-3 in the Ivy League, was without its leading scorer, Ethan Roberts, for a stretch. Moore has had to battle traffic on I-76 almost daily to and from campus. And the long bus rides he took as a player he is now taking as  a coach; earlier this month, the Quakers traveled to Dartmouth and Harvard.

“Things you didn’t like as a player are no different as a coach,” Moore said.

Moore said he’s enjoying the experience, and his brother has noticed.

“He gets to coach with Fran and see his family during the week,” Chuck said. “He couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Said Ronald: “Fran is like family to me. It’s a pleasure to be able to work for him and continue to create history with him. We’re striving to bring Penn basketball back to its days of dominance.”