Bob Moore liked rebuilding broken basketball programs.

He did it at Atkins High in Winston-Salem. Did it on the collegiate level at Virginia Union and Johnson C. Smith, too. Went back to high school and did it at Harding.

Moore, 73, was found dead at his home on Sunday, said Golden Bulls coach Steve Joyner, who was an assistant on Moore’s staff at Virginia Union and succeeded him at JCSU.

Moore was a coach to the core. His father, Clarence Moore was an inductee of the Western North Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame for his sideline prowess. He also inherited the ambition to push his players to great things off the court.

“My father taught me to win on the courts and in the class,” Moore said in JCSU’s 1985 student yearbook. “One is not exclusive of the other."

What Moore was best known for was winning. His college record of 238-145 included a 148-101 run with JCSU from 1978-87, where he won back-to-back CIAA Southern Division championships (1981-82) and led them to their first NCAA tournament berth in 1987.  His final Golden Bulls team went 20-9.

“When we won the CIAA southern division back to back in 1981 and 1982,” Moore told the student yearbook in 1985, “my greatest satisfaction came in May when our seven seniors that won those titles received their degrees together."

He also led Winston-Salem Atkins to the N.C. 4A championship in 1969 – the first African American to win an NCHSAA title after the separate all-black sanctioning board was absorbed.

“He pushed himself really hard to excel,” said Moore’s son Robert Jr., a basketball and football standout at North Mecklenburg High who followed his dad into coaching. “His thing was not the victories and state championships. His thing was always sending kids to (graduation). He had a resume with 80 pages and most of it was the kids he sent off to college and are professionals now. That was his biggest thing.”

Moore returned Virginia Union to respectability when he won a CIAA North title in 1977, setting the foundation for his successor Dave Robbins to build a dynasty starting with the Panthers’ 1980 Division II national championship team – the first of four title squads.

“When you look at the teams Dave Robbins first inherited at Virginia Union, most of those student-athletes were young people Bob Moore recruited,” said Joyner, who has three CIAA championships and an Elite Eight berth at JCSU. “The same thing happened here at Smith and other places he’d been.”

Moore, an Asheville native, turned Atkins High into a state powerhouse when he led the Camels to the state 4A boys’ basketball title with a 23-0 record. Atkins went 20-3 in 1968 but lost to West Charlotte in the playoffs. The next season, the Camels were champions.

“He came in with a new style of basketball – a run-and-gun, pressing type of basketball,” said Joyner, who played flag football for Moore as a sixth-grader at Skyland Elementary School in Winston-Salem and was point guard on the state title squad.

Moore’s offensive style was highly entertaining, especially in the free-wheeling CIAA of the 1980s. Whether it was in half-court or transition, his teams were prolific at getting the ball up the floor and into the basket. Points were plentiful and fans packed Brayboy Gym to see the show, which earned the program national praise. Inside Sports magazine listed Brayboy one of the toughest venues to play in the nation.

“He believed in offensive basketball,” Joyner said. “In fact, in many ways I saw him as an offensive genius. He could take one play and design it three or four different ways. He could put it out for one game one way and change it up a different way and by the third game he’d change it again.”

Moore demanded maximum effort on the floor and in the classroom and did his best to help them achieve their goals. That was the most important lesson he imparted to anyone who watched or listened to his philosophy.

“He taught me to expect a lot out of my players, both on and off the court,” Moore Jr. said. “He did not have any favorites. He didn’t have five starters; he had five players who were starting. The best five who came in and worked hard were the ones who’d start.”

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