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
She felt like during the regular season there were times when she may have had opportunities to take over games and didn't. And now that her career's winding down, in this scenario she wanted the ball in her hands and she wasn't afraid to take big shots.
I think it takes some of the luster off the regular season championship. Now, it doesn't carry as much weight as it used to. Some years, there are breaks in the schedule. Some years are tougher than normal. It's not conducive to having a regular season champion.
We struggled with our regular stuff, so we never did get a chance to unveil our top-secret, super-sensitive, highly classified offense. That might be one of those experiments that never gets off the ground.
I know we didn't win the regular season, but I don't know how finishing second was all that great when you have to get the winner of South Florida-Notre Dame in the first round. I'm saying to myself, the four teams with a bye, this is what we get for a great season. I'm not sure that's ever been the case. They've come into this league and dramatically altered the landscape. They certainly have benefited and we have benefited from it also.
I?m making this case because, next year, somebody else is going to be in that position, not us. As long as you don?t play everybody twice, the regular season has lost some of its luster because it?s not a true regular-season champion any more.
Everybody?s got something like this. That?s my point. Back in the day, you knew you?d play each team home-and-home and at the end of the regular season, you?d say, ?OK, you won the most games, you win.? Now it?s not like that.
The only thing you can do is go ahead with what's there in front of you. If she can play, then you play her. If she can't play, you don't play her.
When you get to be a senior, a certain amount of responsibility falls on your shoulders, like all of it. Everything that happens on our team, you're responsible for it and you can't not take responsibility for it just because you're not playing. ... I think (Turner) understands that now and she was really different the last couple of days in practice.
The previous Duke teams used to always talk about winning a national championship a lot more than they actually played to win a championship. This team is a little bit different. They don't talk as much about it. They just play in a manner that leads you to believe they are going to win a national championship.
This time of year, it's the individual player that makes the difference. The things you do as a program gets you to this point. Then individuals decide the outcome of the games.
This time of year, a team's systems don't matter. It's individual players that end up deciding the outcomes of the games.
This time of the year, it's individual players who make the difference. Your style of play, your system as a program gets you to this point and then individual players end up deciding the outcome of the game. Ann stepped up and made some huge plays.
To their kids' credit, they play hard, even last year when they were losing. Their mind-set is, 'We can win,' where before they were hoping not to get beat by too much. Watching on film, they act like they can win.
With Brittany, you?re not sure what level she?s at. How much will she play during the tournament? I don?t know. How much can she play? I still don?t know.