A rare Pearl

FLORENCE — When Pearl Moore was playing basketball at Francis Marion, even while she was scoring more points than any other woman to play the game, she never even thought about days like today.

With 50 or so friends and family among the audience, Moore will give her acceptance speech tonight during her induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tenn.

She always said there’s no crying in basketball, but she knows she’ll get choked up at some point. She said she might even have to call time out and ask coach Sylvia Hatchell for a sub.

“When I started playing basketball, I never imagined anything like this would happen,” she said. “I never played the game for awards and things like that, but just because I loved it. But this one is big. This is probably the top of the pinnacle. I’m humbled.”

Moore spent a career humbling opposing defenses, amassing 4,061 points, which stood as the scoring record for both women and men for 11 years. Schools often recognize players who score 1,000 points during a career. Moore scored 1,000 or more in a single season — twice.

And Moore played at FMU from 1975-79, long before the days of the 3-point line.

“If we’d had a 3-point shot back then, she could’ve easily added 600 or 800 points, maybe another 1,000 to her points total,” said Hatchell, the North Carolina coach who also coached Moore at Francis Marion.

If Hatchell was the coach that put the Francis Marion women’s basketball program on the map — and she was — Moore was the player that was responsible for doing so.

There were a lot of good players Moore played against, Hatchell said, but Moore’s skills were superior. Moore welcomed the challenge when teams tried to come up with special defenses to stop her.

“She would laugh when teams would do that,” Hatchell said. “Pearl was probably 20 years ahead of her time. She was such a great player, so complete. She was not only a great scorer, but a great passer, a great rebounder. She could do it all. She was so much fun to watch because her skills were just phenomenal.”

Moore finished her career with 1,270 rebounds and nearly 300 assists, as well.

Moore loved putting her basketball skills on display in informal settings, too. Hatchell said “she would play anybody, any time.” Sometimes, that meant going one-on-one against a male.

“She loved playing against guys because she knew she could beat them,” Hatchell said. “She loved the reaction from them when she would beat them up pretty good, or maybe it was the respect they gave her because of her game.”

Moore, a 1975 Wilson High graduate, started her career at Anderson College, but transferred to her hometown school of Francis Marion after just one semester.

“I was coming home every weekend anyway, so I figured I might as well stay at home,” Moore said.

For Hatchell and her fledgling program at Francis Marion, it was the most fortuitous case of homesickness ever.

Moore ended up scoring 3,884 of her points in a Patriot uniform and led Francis Marion to three AIAW national tournament appearances. She averaged 30.6 points per game with the Patriots and scored fewer than 20 points in a game just 18 times in her career. She never scored fewer than 12 points in a game.

Her best effort was a 60-point performance as a junior against Eastern Washington State in the 1978 AIAW Small College tournament. She reached 50 points three times in her career.

“Pearl brought a lot of fun to the team and a lot of confidence because she was so good,” said Becky Moody Williamson, who was a senior for the Patriots when Moore joined the team. “We didn’t mind her shooting so much because we knew she could shoot and we wanted to win. She took basketball at Francis Marion to a higher level.”

For Moore, the benefits were sometimes more than just scoring points and winning basketball games.

Her father and older brother, she said, told her each of them would give her $300 if she surpassed LSU great Pete Maravich’s career scoring total of 3,667.

“Six hundred dollars went a long way back then,” Moore said, chuckling. “I got to take a nice spring break trip to Florida.”

If Moore has any regrets, it’s the fact that she ended her college career without any national titles. Hatchell led the Patriots to their first national title in 1982, three years after Moore left.

“I’d rather have some championships than some of those points,” she said.

These days, Moore still lives and works in Florence for the U.S. Postal Service. She’s still very much a fan of the game and takes a trip to the women’s Final Four each year with Williamson and others.

She also runs a basketball camp for girls each summer. It’s more work than people realize, she said, but if it helps a youngster find her path in life, it’s well worth the effort. Moore makes sure she educates campers about more than basketball.

“To play that game was dreaming for me,” Moore said. “There are a lot of girls at my camp who aren’t going to dream past high school. Not every kid gets to go to college. But there are other avenues I want to make sure they know about.”

That’s because not everyone can play college basketball. And it’s doubtful anyone will be another Pearl Moore.