Moore Adds Offense to Defensive Skills : Tustin: While recovering from ankle injury, senior spent the summer working on his shooting.

Jentry Moore received the biggest scare of his basketball life last month.

With about a minute remaining in Tustin’s first practice of the season, Moore landed on teammate Derek Roche’s leg, wrenching his ankle and sending frightening images into his mind.

“I didn’t know what to think,” Moore said. “It felt like it was broken. I never felt that much pain. I was thinking that my senior year and all the stuff I worked hard for was gone.

“I’m glad it didn’t end up that way.”

It turned out to be a severely sprained ankle--one that would only keep him out for the first two weeks of the season.

Tustin, the defending State Division II champion, has struggled to a 3-4 record without Moore and several players from the football team, which lost to Valencia in the Southern Section Division VI title game Friday night. But Moore started practicing with the team again Monday after a three-week layoff, and expects to be in the starting lineup for Tuesday’s nonleague game against Servite.

“It’s frustrating because this is my senior year,” Moore said. “I really want to play, but I don’t want to rush anything. I know we’re going to be a good team once we get everybody back.”

Moore, who signed a letter of intent to play for Texas Christian during the NCAA early-signing period last month, will be a key for the Tillers. Last season, he was basically a defensive role-player on a team led by David Beilstein and Thomas Clayton. This season, he’s expected to do more.

“He’s by far the best defensive player in Orange County without a doubt,” Tustin Coach Tom McCluskey said. “He’s always been able to defend real well, but his offense has been way behind his defensive skills.”

During the summer, Moore worked at evening out his game and he has returned a much-improved offensive player. He took shot after outside shot in solo practice sessions. He gained all the confidence he needed in the first game he played with Team LA, a traveling all-star team.

“I made four three-pointers, and they just kept giving me the ball,” Moore said. “They had confidence in me when I was shooting, so they kept passing it to me.

“We won that game, so from that point on I didn’t hesitate to shoot it.”

Moore has made remarkable progress since he first played organized basketball during his freshman year at Tustin. McCluskey said he could see Moore had potential, but that he was so raw he didn’t start for the freshmen team.

“He just didn’t know where to move on the floor,” McCluskey said. “It was totally foreign to him. He just didn’t know what fundamental meant at all.”

Thanks to lengthy tutoring sessions by Tustin assistant Tom Gorrell, Moore had improved enough to be the junior varsity’s leading scorer through the first month of the season as a sophomore when he was called up to the varsity to replace an injured player.

Moore became a starter before the Sea View League season began. Until the injury, he had started every game since.

McCluskey said few college coaches recruited Moore in earnest (he chose TCU over Cal State Long Beach and Cal State San Bernardino) because he wasn’t a great scorer as a junior. However, McCluskey said that those who passed on Moore overlooked the intangibles.

“He has great innate ability to lead through example,” McCluskey said. “If there’s a loose ball and he’s anywhere nearby, the kid’s going to get it 100% of the time.

“Not a lot of people went after him. I think TCU got a good little pick there. But all that remains to be seen.”

For now, Moore is concentrating on making up for lost time--time when he was on the bench, wishing he could play.

“When my ankle gets better, I’ll just take (back) what I missed out,” he said. “I’m not going to slack off one bit and I’m going to just think how bad I missed it and push myself harder.”