Scott Moore heard the rumblings. There was a kid up the road getting overlooked by the big-time programs who might be worth the hour-long drive.
Moore filed away the information but didn’t immediately jump in his car. Even by small-town Indiana standards, LaGrange is sparsely-populated farmland tucked within the heart of Amish Country. And even in a basketball-mad state where hidden recruiting gems are swishing jumpers behind every corn field, tiny Prairie Heights High School wasn’t a big draw.
Moore, though, is as diligent as any basketball coach, and soon he found himself fighting for space inside a packed-to-the-gills gymnasium at Prairie Heights. Moore found one of the last open spots, against the wall just a few feet behind one of the backboards, when Elijah Malone lumbered onto the floor.
And so began a basketball journey, and relationship, that comes full circle on Sunday, as Malone and the Colorado Buffaloes host his former team, Moore’s Grace College Lancers, in an exhibition matchup that begins at noon at the CU Events Center.
“Like most Indiana gyms, it’s packed to the brim,” Moore recalled of the day he met Malone. “This humongous, behemoth of a kid walks out. First, you’re just overwhelmed by his size. Then you tip off and you start watching him, and he’s got great hands, he’s got great feet. The moment I talked to him, I said that’s our guy.”
Malone is CU’s guy now and, as he has from those storybook-like days in a small Indiana gym, the Buffs’ 6-foot-10 center is taking advantage of the opportunities in front of him.
Malone is the rare Hoosier recruit who slipped through the cracks despite his hulking frame. Moore also is a graduate of Grace, which plays at the NAIA level, and he won his conference’s coach of the year honor before Malone arrived. With Malone, however, the Lancers turned into a national power, advancing to the Elite Eight in 2023 and the Final Four the next year.
Malone was a two-time All-American and, in 2024, earned a Travis Hunter-like level of hardware. He won the Crossroads League Player of the Year, the NAIA Player of the Year and the Bevo Francis Award, a prestigious honor given to the top small college player in the nation across the entirety of the Division II, III, junior college and NAIA levels.
Along the way, Moore said plenty of Division I coaches inquired about Malone’s services. Grace’s coach said more often than not, the humble and reserved Malone usually replied, “You don’t want me to go, do you?”
Yet it’s that team-first attitude that lifted Malone into national prominence. Looking back at the start of Malone’s collegiate career, Moore, at the time, said he had enough veterans in the frontcourt that he could work in Malone slowly as a freshman. That plan quickly went out the door, and soon the oversized kid who checked into Grace at nearly 300 pounds finished a team outdoor mile in less than 6 minutes.
“Within two weeks of being with us, I’m like, ‘Holy cow, I think we’ve got something,’” Moore said. “The transformation of his body, you could see the skill set come through. He lost a lot of weight. When he finished (that mile) I’m thinking guys are not supposed to move like this. You got to see how really serious he got about his craft. He had kind of a coming out party at the end of his sophomore season. And then the rest is history.”
Players across all levels of college basketball were granted an extra year of eligibility from the 2020-21 COVID season, and Malone used that extra year to spurn interest from home state programs like Notre Dame and Indiana to join the Buffs.
Malone at times was dominant early in his first season at CU, but he struggled in his first taste of the bigger, more athletic big men in the Big 12 Conference. He rallied late, though, scoring 14 points on a 7-for-10 showing in a win against West Virginia in the Big 12 tournament before finishing the season with another 7-for-10 game, this time with 17 points, in a loss against Villanova in Las Vegas.
Malone played in 34 of 35 games last year, starting 20. He averaged 7.9 points and 3.2 rebounds with a .592 field goal percentage. While he struggled to gain traction in Big 12 play, he still had his moments against top-flight competition. Malone went a combined 13-for-20 while averaging 15 points in games against Michigan State and UConn at the Maui Invitational.
Malone arrived in Boulder believing he had only one more season to work with. But a legal settlement by the NCAA last year granted another season of eligibility for all former junior college and NAIA players, allowing Malone to run it back one more time with the Buffs. The big kid who had never previously left small town Indiana didn’t know what to expect at the power conference level. Malone showed signs of figuring it out late last season, and he believes he’s ready to put that wisdom to good use.
“I know what I’m going into now, and I’m more comfortable with that,” Malone said. “That was a good learning curve, starting the Big 12. And the double-teams in the Big 12. Those were things I hadn’t seen before. But I’ve learned to play against those.
“(Sunday) is kind of one of those full circle moments. I spent four years there and helped build that program. And I really love the coaching staff there. Them being able to come out here and play on this floor and experience that with me, it’s going to be amazing.”