By Jim Fuller, Register Staff

STORRS — It’s close to impossible to crunch Maya Moore’s numbers since she arrived at UConn without being left in a state of wonderment.

Moore, the junior forward, will continue her climb up the Huskies’ career charts today when the nation’s top-ranked women’s basketball team plays at DePaul (8 p.m., CPTV). Moore needs nine points to move by Svetlana Abrosimova and into eighth on the UConn scoring list. Two rebounds will allow her to pass Abrosimova again for the 10th spot. If Moore maintains her current pace, she will leave as the school’s career leading scorer, second in 3-pointers, third in rebounds, fourth in steals and blocks and seventh in assists.

Those are just her on-court numbers. Moore has a chance to become the Huskies’ only three-time Academic All-American. She joined Bradley’s Jenny Van Kirk as the only two of the 190 women’s basketball players honored last week as members of the Academic All-District squad who has an individualized major.

Much like she did when she opted to play for the unrelenting Geno Auriemma, Moore has opted not to take the path of least resistance when it came to the pursuit of her college degree.

Passing on the chance of declaring a double major, she worked with Margaret Lamb, who runs UConn’s individualized major program, to suit her needs and academic ambitions. The sport, media and promotion major allows her to focus on journalism, communications and education kinesiology.

“It was a process,” said Moore, who has a 3.70 grade-point average in her first five semesters at UConn. “I started early on in my sophomore year getting things going, working really hard. I had numerous meetings with various (advisors), the head of the program Margaret Lamb and an academic advisor Monica Van Beusekom, just back and forth in their office and making my list of classes trying to figure out a name (for the major). Then I had to write a two-page proposal of why I wanted to do it and go in front of a committee and explain why this should become a major.”

While journalism is the area of her three-headed major which intrigues her the most, Moore will likely end up minoring in communications, because of the large number of communications classes she will have under her belt by the time she graduates.

“The journalism class will help me get a step ahead,” Moore said. “Sports broadcasting is what I want to get into at some point in my future. The class will help me with that. Communications, you can never go wrong with communications. I will actually end up getting a minor in it. I am taking so many classes, sports-related classes, because it is directly related to my future with sports law, sports marketing. It will all benefit me in some way, and I will be interested in it.”

With another impressive effort during the recently completed fall semester, Moore made it a perfect 5-for-5 in making the dean’s list. At halftime of Saturday’s game

against St. John’s, the student-athletes who made the dean’s list will be honored. Moore is one of eight members of the team that will take part in the celebration. Continued...

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The timing is ironic since this week was a challenging one for the Huskies, who have to play two road games while focusing on any work they missed in classes while they were traveling back and forth from Louisville and then Chicago.

“It’s very hard,” Moore said. “I wish people could just take out the video camera and just follow us during a week to see how hard it is, because you have to plan ahead, you have to be proactive. You have to e-mail (professors) ahead of time, make sure you know the office hours, make sure you know somebody in the class who you can get notes (from). It is really tough.”

Jim Fuller can be reached at jfuller@newhavenregister.com.

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