Geno Auriemma

Geno Auriemma
Luigi "Geno" Auriemma is an Italian-born American college basketball coach and the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team. He has led UConn to eleven NCAA Division I national championships, a feat matched by no one else in college basketball, and has won seven national Naismith College Coach of the Year awards. Auriemma has been the head coach of the United States women's national basketball team since 2009, during which time his teams won the 2010...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth23 March 1954
CityMontella, Italy
I sense that this year, there have been more near-upsets and more great moments in this tournament than maybe the last five combined. Which is a sign, I think, that we are going in the right direction.
Sometimes you get it right and you have to kind of enjoy the moment. That last five minutes, the defensive stops that we made, the things that we accomplished, that's what good teams have to do.
Obviously in the long term, as the season wears on, there's no way you can be as good a team without someone who is, I think, one of the best five players in the league. Meg can put up 20 points every night, and that has to be comforting. But this West Virginia team is still one of the best that I've seen. That team is very difficult to play against.
I was flabbergasted we couldn't execute something we have run every day in practice for the last five months.
It just kind of disappears out of nowhere. There'll be five possessions where you'll think, 'Holy cow, that's an unbelievable play!' And then it just disappears.
We're quite unpredictable. I think the kids understand that. We go five possessions where we look really good, and then we go five where the kids on the bench go, 'What was that?' We're still getting there. We're not there yet.
Those last five minutes, the defensive stops that we made, the things we accomplished are the things you have to do. I think we made the plays. Offensively we got the ball where we wanted to get it. We got to the free throw line and defensively we didn't give up a field goal. That is a far cry from last Monday (against Rutgers). That is the nature of the game. You get it right and you feel great. You get it wrong you feel lousy.
They stood around and wondered how we were going to win this game tonight. Then, something clicked. I don't know if we could have won this game four, five months ago.
Our coaches said don't worry about her. She's hitting about one 3-pointer a game. It seemed like she made one about every five minutes.
I remember saying that. It was right around the baseball playoffs. I always thought it was pretty cool how a manager would send a pitcher ahead to the next city to wait for his team. I wanted to give Will the opportunity to do that. Why sit around for five months doing nothing? I figured she could be up there scouting out the hotels and restaurants and sightseeing tours for us.
I knew we would find a different Notre Dame team than the one we played at their place. I knew we would have to play a lot better than we did there. Our post players came up really big. It went exactly the way I thought it would except for the last five or six minutes, considering the kind of week we had.
We weren't sure whether or not it was real serious or mildly serious or whatever. When we got back, it was X-rayed and there's no fractures. It's just a bad ankle sprain and she's definitely out for Saturday and then we'll take it from there.
We got the big lead and we had a chance, when pressure came, to really make some plays to extend it. But we let one play lead to another to another to another. It just got completely away from us. I guess credit their defense, but I was just looking at the stat sheet.
I've seen (Strother) go through stretches where nothing's gone in, but she had that one stretch where she made everything. It all evens itself out, I think. I think all she needs is a couple to drop. ... She'll come around.