It won't rank up there with the Connecticut-Duke championship game in 1999, but Wels-Gmunden 2009 provided a nice 10th anniversary ring for Ricky Moore.

The former Westside High and UConn star has been plying his basketball trade overseas for most of the past seven years, and earlier this month Moore helped his team win its first Austrian league championship.

"It was crazy from the mayor to the owner to the fans ... it was crazy," Moore said of the celebration after his MVP performance helped WBC Wels earn the city's first sports championship in 50 years. "They never experienced a championship in anything."

It might not seem like much for a guy who was a key player in one of the greatest NCAA championship games in history. UConn's 77-74 victory over a Duke team riding a 32-game winning streak was one of the most highly anticipated Final Four games in history, and it pitted the defensive specialist Moore against playground rival William Avery in an all-Augusta subplot.

Moore, 33, knows that kind of competitive grandeur can't be recaptured on any stage.

"College is its own thing," Moore said. "I don't think you can even compare that to the NBA. The excitement of college basketball, you can never experience that ever again. That's in a league all of its own."

But the lure of basketball glory never grows dim. That competitive fire has kept Moore bouncing from NBDL to CBA to Europe. Moore never expected to be part of an NCAA championship team, much less travel the world playing the game he grew up on at Westside.

Since graduating from college, Moore has played in Germany, Turkey, Austria (twice), Sweden and the Ukraine. Not all of them have been worth writing home about.

"Without basketball I'd never have been able to go to those places," Moore said. "It's a blessing for me because you get to see different cultures and really see how good we have it here in the States."

A year ago, Moore was ready to take his basketball career in a different direction. He returned to the U.S. and tried to get a foot in the door in the college coaching pipeline. He did some AAU coaching with the Charlotte Royals, but a college job never materialized.

That's when he got a call from the owner of the Austrian team he'd first played for in 2004.

"Didn't have a job, so I had no other choice," Moore said. "I still love the game and still love playing but I was trying to get a head start on building a foundation for coaching. Everything worked out. I went back over and won a championship."

Wels -- a town in Upper Austria about an hour east of Salzburg -- met the Austria-A Bundesliga power Gmunden Swans in the best-of-five finals. The Swans had owned the title from 2005-07 behind the leadership of former Murray State star Deteri Mayes.

But Wels clinched the series 3-1 with an 82-80 victory that prompted a raucous celebration in its 2,000-seat bandbox of an arena. Moore was picked as the series MVP.

"Taking advantage of opportunities and working hard each and every day when I was in high school and college has paid off," Moore said.

Last season was his first overseas accompanied by his entire family -- wife Heather, 2-year-old daughter Kendyll and 8-month-old son Ricky Jr. Moore even took an eight-week course in German to learn enough to be comfortable while traveling.

"Going to Ukraine and places like that wouldn't have been a good idea for them to be there because it's a tough, tough lifestyle," he said. "My daughter will start school over there next year and hopefully learn some German."

They will all return to Europe in August to fulfill the second year in Moore's contract. If the NBA doesn't come knocking, Moore hopes to sign another two-year contract and accumulate enough savings to give him the chance to endure the ground floor of college coaching.

"God willing I'd like to play three to four more years and then try to get into coaching," he said. "I've got the love and the passion for it, so I definitely want to get into coaching. Right now I'm trying to build a nest egg for my family and if I have to take a job that doesn't pay very much money I can do that."

For now, the spotlight on his basketball stardom hasn't faded yet.

"We can't complain the way we get treated," Moore said.

Champions rarely do.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.