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
Geno Auriemma quotes about
I'm thinking the difference between this year and last year is that we've been in situations where we've been successful on the road in tough environments. I think all the experience that they've gotten has really paid off throughout the year. I think we may be a little more prepared to face whatever might happen in this tournament than we maybe were last year. It might be a little bit of a confidence thing. They probably do, right now, have a lot of confidence. If they don't by now, they never will.
It's different than it was two years ago. People buy into teams and into personalities. We were coming off a national championship and we had the dominant personality in the country. Now we're coming off losing in the Sweet 16 and we have a bunch of nice kids that are just happy to be here. Maybe I'm going to have to rile some people up, start saying and doing stuff that stirs the pot a bit.
It's different than it was two years ago, ... People buy into teams and into personalities. We were coming off a national championship and we had the dominant personality in the country. Now we're coming off losing in the Sweet 16 and we have a bunch of nice kids that are just happy to be here. Maybe I'm going to have to rile some people up, start saying and doing stuff that stirs the pot a bit.
To her credit, Will?s hung in there this year when it could have gotten away from her. Now you?re looking at a possibility of (15) more games, if you?re lucky enough to play that long, so maybe somebody like Will in the next month can salvage something pretty darn good out of something that looked like it was really terrible.
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.
Some teams would have maybe gone from 17 down to 27 down right away. That says a lot about (Louisville).
Our defense bails us out a lot of times. Say what you will about both Rutgers games and how bad we were offensively, we had a chance to win. I used to have teams that made every play, every time. Now we're looking at a team that maybe doesn't have the ability to make every play, every time. But what we have to do is make certain plays at key times. If we can do that, we'll be all right.
I would say for 32 minutes we were pretty good. Six or seven minutes I think in that first half maybe weren't that good, but I think this was as complete a game at both ends of the floor as we've had in a while.
It seems like we're in the late game an unusual amount of times compared to maybe some other schools. I guess that's a good thing that people want us to be in that game. Or maybe they're trying to keep women and children from being exposed to some of the stuff that we do on the court, and hoping everybody's asleep by the time we play. I do think it's difficult on the players.
There's a lot of soul searching that has to go on. Maybe we just don't have it in us. Maybe we're just not good enough right now.
Today we played almost well enough to win the game. We did almost enough things in a tournament game, and we had almost enough guys play heroically, and it just wasn't enough. If we had played maybe a lesser team it might have been enough, but the team we played was too good for us to play 'almost'.
We're 18-2 and it doesn't feel that way. I don't know why. Maybe because you know how many games are really hard to play in and you just keep thinking, 'This is really hard.' If someone figures out what we're not good at, it's good night, Irene.
I think the game was pretty much indicative of what a lot of what this season has been all about. Nothing's come easy. You can't count on anything any more. Everything's a struggle, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.
I think because of Diana (Taurasi playing for the Mercury), circumstances are different in this one, ... Maybe people sense that the climate is different at Connecticut than it was in the past.