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 kind of like being on the road, everybody talks about being at home as this huge advantage. It can be, but the distractions at home can be huge, too.
This Duke team doesn't seem to talk as much about winning a championship. They just play in a manner that leads you to believe they can win one.
The Brittany thing is a lot better than we could have even imagined. We could be sitting here right now talking about how the meniscus transplant didn't work as well as we liked and it doesn't look like she will play. That was a possibility. And here we're looking at it and - knock on wood - she hasn't had one incident with that since she started being able to do things. That came out way better than we anticipated.
The Brittany thing is a lot better than we could have even imagined, ... We could be sitting here right now talking about how the meniscus transplant didn't work as well as we liked and it doesn't look like she will play. That was a possibility. And here we're looking at it and - knock on wood - she hasn't had one incident with that since she started being able to do things. That came out way better than we anticipated.
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.
She's very, very good under pressure. She doesn't get bothered by anything. That's why she's kind of hard for me to coach because when I talk to her, she don't listen because she's not affected by anything. I knew she was going to make the free throws.
I know everybody has talked about parity the last couple of years, and it hasn't played out at the end of the season. But there does seem to be more even teams than in the past.
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.
We needed some time. The only days we did anything was Friday and Saturday. Both of the days were more of just getting our heads rather than our bodies ready. We had a talk last night with the team and a lot of really good things came out.
He and I talk all the time about playing again and we probably will. They're a really good team to play. I think he runs the kind of program that I would enjoy matching up against from a competitive standpoint and from a personal standpoint that I have a lot of respect for him and I have a really good relationship with him. I would want to do it if we could.
I can't tell you how many times I've been offered jobs in that league that no one ever knew about. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people seriously about jobs in that league. This one just happened to make it to that point ... to the newspapers.
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.
In games like this it?s usually when you do something rather than how many. And I thought today we made great plays, got the lead up, lost our composure a little bit, struggled a little bit offensively for a stretch but these guys have come a long way, I?m really proud of them.
I'm not always right, don't get me wrong. It doesn't always work out that way, but I think for the most part it has.