Pearl Moore
*Pearl Moore was born on this date in 1957. She is a retired Black woman's professional basketball player.
Born in Florence, South Carolina, Moore began playing basketball while attending Wilson High School. She started for all four years and earned the MVP award at the 1975 and 1976 AAU Junior Olympic Games.
Moore began her collegiate career with Anderson Junior College for one semester, amassing 177 points in eight games, and transferred to Francis Marion University; because of AIAW rules, Moore was immediately eligible to play the remainder of the 1975–76 season for the campus's team, the Patriots. Patriots head coach Sylvia Hatchell reflected on Moore's unique ability to score: "She was outside, inside, she could handle the ball, draw fouls. I saw her wait for the defense to catch up so she could draw the foul and make a 3-point play. She was ahead of her time."
During her junior year, Moore posted a single-game record of 60 points in a victory over Eastern Washington State College in the 1978 AIAW Small College National Tournament. On March 10, 1979, in her final collegiate game, Moore scored 42 points against the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to break the previous record of 4,045 career points, previously set by Travis Grant of Kentucky State University. Overall, Moore averaged 30.6 points per game during her stint at Francis Marion, scored 4,061 points in an era where the three-point arc was not incorporated into women's basketball, and helped lead the Patriots to three national championship appearances.
Throughout her career with Francis Marion, Moore consistently scored double-figures and posted less than 20 points in only 18 of her total 128 games, which testifies to her offensive dominance. Moore graduated from Francis Marion in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science in sociology. She was selected in the first round by the New York Stars in the Women's Professional Basketball League draft. In her first professional season, the Stars concluded their regular schedule with the highest winning percentage in the league. Despite a 36-point game from "Machine Gun" Molly Bolin of the Iowa Cornets, the Stars won the championship series behind a 27-point effort by Moore.
She played another season, joining the St. Louis Streak, and participated in the 1981 WBL All-Star Game. When the WBL folded, Moore played the final season of her professional career in Venezuela. Following her pro career, Moore coached high school teams. She was inducted into the FMU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Women's Hall of Fame in 2011. Michael Hawkins, who nominated Moore for the latter honor, called her one of college basketball's most prolific scorers and the best player Francis Marion ever produced. Moore currently hosts her own girls' basketball camp. In May 2021, Moore was selected to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in its 2021 class.
