UConn’s Final Four run is a celebration of where the program once was

HOUSTON — UConn assistant Tom Moore has seen every version of the men’s basketball program.

He arrived to a thriving program in 1994 and coached under Jim Calhoun until 2007, making the tournament nine times during his first stint and winning two national championships (1999, 2004). He later joined Dan Hurley in his final year at Rhode Island and followed him back to UConn, where the program was in a completely different place.

“I thank Dan, for just giving me the opportunity to just try to be a small part of this when we came back,” Moore, 57, said in the team’s locker room Friday. “That first spring that we got back here, you know what the goals are of UConn basketball – win a national championship, Final Fours, lottery picks, that type of thing – but when you’re living in that moment, we were a ways away. The KenPom was whatever it was, 150 or something like that, you’re just like, ‘Wow.’

“I respect and admire so much the way Dan has chosen to do it. Player development, hard work, 11 months a year with these guys, relationship building with these guys – people ask us all the time, ‘Why do they play so hard?’ It’s because they know Dan’s with them. He’s in the gym with them 11 months out of the year, he’s not absent in the spring, in the summer, fall, he’s there. That’s something that you earn with your players.”

Star-studded reunion: The star of UConn’s 1999 title team, Richard “Rip” Hamilton, spoke with the Huskies at their closed practice once they arrived in Houston on Thursday. He and Jordan Hawkins have been compared all season in a similar way to how Hawkins has been likened to Ray Allen. Both of those legends are expected to be in attendance over the course of the weekend in Houston, in addition to other like Emeka Okafor, Kemba Walker, Charlie Villanueva and Jake Voskhul.

“Rip’s message to these guys was like, ‘When we won it in ’99 we were playing for our teammates, ourselves, but we were playing for the guys before us who hadn’t won it’ – Ray Allen, Donyell (Marshall), all those guys. So they hear that message, and then for those guys to come back it validates that message,” Moore said.

Moore said Marcus Williams, AJ Price, and Rashad Anderson were also trying to make the trip but he wasn’t certain on their status. Chris Smith, Caron Butler and Rudy Gay couldn’t make it to Saturday’s game but would be able to attend a potential national championship appearance on…