UConn’s Geno Auriemma on his 40 years at the top and how the NCAA has evolved

[ad_1]

UConn’s Geno Auriemma on his 40 years at the top and how the NCAA has evolved

Geno Auriemma has been a stalwart of women’s college basketball for four decades, achieving success most coaches could only dream of.

In 1985 he took over a UConn program with just one winning season and has since led it to 11 NCAA Division I titles – the most in NCAA history.

He also has the most wins of any NCAA head coach after surpassing Tara VanDerveer last November. But the fire inside the 70-year-old remains as fierce as when he first arrived in Storrs 40 years ago, as his Huskies beat defending champions South Carolina 87-58 on the road last weekend.

On the latest episode of “The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show,” Auriemma joined Zena Keita, Chantel Jennings and Sabreena Merchant to chart how the game has changed over his four decades at the top. Below are a few highlights from the conversation, you can listen to the full interview on the podcast feed.

This embedded content is not available in your region.

Jennings: I’m curious looking at the current state of women’s college basketball and the changes that we’ve seen in the last few years. How would 2025 Geno Auriemma explain the college basketball landscape to the 1985 Geno, who took the job at UConn without even seeing what the gym looked like?

Auriemma: Yeah, that’s like trying to explain in 2025 what it was like to live in the Roman Empire. It’s ancient history and hard to describe to anyone that wasn’t there because you had to be there to believe the landscape now relative to then. At Connecticut, we were just trying not to finish eighth or ninth in our league. There were nine teams in the Big East, so we were trying to make sure we didn’t finish eighth or ninth because that’s where they finished every year. That was the play-in game in order to get into the Big East tournament. And we accomplished that goal as we didn’t finish eighth or ninth. Teams like Providence, Villanova, Syracuse, BC (Boston College)…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/uconn-geno-auriemma-40-years-144604115.html

Author : The Athletic

Publish date : 2025-02-21 14:46:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.