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.
There's some seniors that would be afraid to take that drive. You can't become great unless you're willing to suffer the consequences if it doesn't go in. You've just got to know it's going in.
She's come a long way with this team. She's one of the great people in the game and I'm happy for her.
She is assembling a really great cast here. She is taking young players and playing them. Once they are older they will know how to play together. Pitt accomplished more (yesterday) then we did.
No one ever talks about our defense. Our defense has always been good. But when you have great offensive players like I've coached the last 15 years, it's hard to concentrate on our defense. But our defense has been pretty good.
You have to temper everything, you have to say that some of the passes that we threw, if they were thrown against teams that have great athletic ability, they might have been stolen. But you look at it and you say, ?How many turnovers should you have if you play Albany?? Well, seven is a good number.
I want them to be remembered for being at Connecticut for four years and having had an incredible experience during those four years that no one else got to experience in their four years. It?s unfair to think of them as, ?Well, this is how it ended.? It ended not great, but there was a lot of great stuff that they were a part of.
It's a great barometer for not only what is happening with our team at the moment but what could happen, what might happen down the road. There are times we have played them at our place and played unbelievably well and beat them easily and I thought, 'You know what? I think this team can win the national championship.' There's times when we've played them at their place and got our heads handed to us and I left there thinking, 'You know what? I'm not sure we're a national championship-type team.
Watching them play kind of brought back memories of when you spring an upset. I don't remember the last time we had a chance to spring an upset on somebody. It's a great feeling for them.
We're not a great free throw shooting team but the fact that we could make that many free throws here when we had to make them, I think that's a great sign for our guys.
They haven't done anything wrong yet in practice. They love it here. They think this is the greatest place in the world, and they should. In addition, this is probably the most energetic and upbeat group of kids that we've had here in a long, long time. Individually and collectively, they have fun and have outgoing personalities. They are just a joy to be around and I think they are going to contribute because they are that good.
This is what we get for having a great season.
I think we have a reputation of being a really good NCAA tournament team. There does seem to be a little more of an edge to our game, a little more of a focus. I don't think we get up tight. I see teams that get very, very tentative and tense at tournament time and I don't see us being like that generally. I think our approach as a coaching staff is pretty laid back. We want to reward our kids for a great season.
I think Brittany Hunter is capable of playing lousy against anybody like she did (Sunday) night. And I think she's capable of playing great like she played against Tennessee, against anybody.