Westmont College Warriors

After 27 seasons as head coach of Westmont Men’s Basketball, Coach Moore accumulated a record of 558-278 (.667) at Westmont and an overall record of 637-352 (.644) in 32 years as a collegiate head coach, before retiring after the 2019-20 season.

"Coaching and teaching is more meaningful for me today than it was eight to ten years ago," said Moore. "It is more significant because of the kinds of things that are important in coaching.  Someone once said to me, ‘You don’t have a philosophy of coaching until you get to 15 years as a head coach.’ I discounted that originally, but there was a point for me, and it was in that 15-year range, that I realized that I had a philosophy of coaching – that makes it more meaningful for me and more meaningful for my players."

Moore was named NAIA Coach of the Year for the 2019-20 season, becoming the first Westmont men's basketball head coach to earn the honor.

His Warriors won the GSAC regular season championship after being picked to finish sixth in the conference entering the season. Westmont earned the #2 seed in the Liston Bracket of the NAIA National Tournament, its highest ever seed under the current tournament format, before the season was cut short due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The team finished the year ranked #7 in the NAIA Coaches' Poll.

His accomplishments at Westmont include three Golden State Athletic Conference tournament championships and two regular season championships. Moore’s teams have qualified for the NAIA National Tournament 14 times, including a program record six consecutive seasons since 2015.

The Warriors finished as national runner-up in 2015 and made an NAIA semifinal appearance in 1999.

At Westmont, Moore has coached 42 All-GSAC selections, including two who were named GSAC Player of the Year, and 23 players who have received All-American honors. He is a three-time GSAC Coach of the Year (1998-99, 2012-13, 2019-20) and was named the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table College Coach of the Year in 2015.

Additionally, 13 of his players have been named NAIA Scholar-Athletes, while each senior in his program has graduated with a degree from Westmont.

“We come to coach because there is a relational element which becomes more significant the deeper one gets into one’s career,” said Moore. “The success is always going to be meaningful.  We are competitors as coaches. But there is a greater success that lies in a meaningful life.”

Moore first came to Westmont in 1976. He was a highly sought after point guard at Cypress College and has since been inducted into the Cypress College Athletic Hall of Fame. In May of 2011, Moore was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of Cypress College.

He was also inducted into the inaugural class of the Santa Barbara Basketball Court of Champions in June 2014.

Former Warrior coach Chet Kammerer recruited Moore and became one of the great influences on his life. Moore quickly fell in love with Westmont and also made an immediate impact on the basketball floor. He was named to the All-District team and All-Far West squad, and earned the Tom Byron Most Inspirational Player Award. His competitiveness and desire to win were always evident. During his senior year, Moore led the Warriors to the second round of the NAIA national tournament where the Warriors lost in double overtime. His career total of 422 assists ranks fourth at Westmont, despite playing only two years.

Moore has now coached on the collegiate level in four decades, beginning as an assistant at Santa Barbara City College under Frank Carbajal. He also coached at Azusa Pacific, where he earned a master’s degree in social science, and at Chapman College.

In 1988, Moore accepted the head coaching position at Fresno Pacific University. Starting with a team that had experienced six straight losing seasons, Moore guided the Sunbirds to an 18-13 record in his first season. In 1989-90 and 1990-91 Fresno Pacific won back-to-back GSAC regular-season titles. He was named the GSAC and NAIA District 3 Coach of the Year in 1990.

Moore returned to Westmont in 1993 to continue a Warrior tradition that has produced 22 trips to the national tournament and winning seasons in 49 of the past 51 years (since the 1968-69 season).

Besides his coaching duties at Westmont, Moore serves as an Associate Athletic Director and is also an Associate Professor of Kinesiology whose classes include Public Speaking in Kinesiology. In the summer months, Moore runs the Westmont basketball camps and hosts Westmont’s high school basketball tournaments.

Moore also serves on the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Board of Directors, becoming just the second NAIA coach to be on the board. He will help make administrative decisions for college basketball alongside the likes of John Calipari (Kentucky), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), and Bill Self (Kansas). Other duties of his include working this summer as a West Regional instructor at the inaugural NCAA College Basketball Academy. Moore, who is the past president of the NAIA Men’s Basketball Coaches Association, also serves on the NAIA Men’s Basketball Ratings Oversight Committee.

Moore also has international experience, most recently in Hong Kong, taking part in several tours throughout Asia, where he spent 10 years of his childhood. He has coached the junior national teams for the countries of Bangladesh and Sudan. Moore served as part of the USA Basketball Committee in both 2002 and 2014 that helped select players to 19-and-under teams. These teams have included players such as Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Justise Winslow, Myles Turner, and Stanley Johnson.

Moore comes from a basketball family. His brother Mike starred at Westmont in the mid-80’s, while his sister Beth was a member of UCLA’s national championship team in 1978. Moore’s wife, Rachel, served for several years as the director of her family’s Lavin Basketball Camps. Her brother, Steve, is the former head basketball coach at UCLA and St. John’s (N.Y.), and is a current college basketball analyst for Fox Sports, CBS Sports, and Pac-12 Network.

Moore’s mother, Pat, is legendary at Westmont. Her enthusiasm at games has made her a fan favorite, especially with the student body. Mama Moore is known throughout the conference for her ability to rally the Westmont fans. She’s also been known to offer helpful suggestions to the officials from time to time. During the home game against Biola in the 2006-07 season, Mama Moore was uncharacteristically sitting on the community side of Murchison Gymnasium behind the Warriors’ bench. The student body would have none of that. Two students crossed the gym floor and escorted her back to the student section, directly in the middle of cheering students.

John and his wife Rachel have two daughters, Jacqueline who lives in New York, and Jessica who just graduated from UC Berkeley.