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
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.
(Turner) had an unbelievable night. There comes a point and time when you're a senior when you have to start to assert yourself. Usually those times are on the road.
I'd like to be able to dial it up when we needed it. Unfortunately, sometimes you keep waiting and waiting and it never happens. My hope is that some time in the next 24 hours we play as close to our ability as we can. Right now, I think we need to play one of the best games that we've played. I don't know where we are in terms of that, but I'd like to see us come close to that (tonight).
My family's grown up here. I've done a million things here that I'm really proud of. (And) 99.9 percent of the time I've been treated better than I ever envisioned that I'd be treated. So I'm not looking to go anywhere. I'm not looking to run away from anything. I'm not looking to find greener pastures.
I think she's taking it pretty seriously. You know, it's that time of the year.
Renee set the tone in the second half by how aggressive she was, looking to score, looking to make a play every time down the court. When she's aggressive, she's as good as anybody. She's got all the skills, and her best games are on the road. That's a great sign.
I thought that we executed our game plan pretty well for about 30-some minutes. This was as much of a complete game as we've had in a long, long time and I'm really happy for our guys.
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 thought Renee set the tone in the second half by how aggressive she was. She was looking to score and make a play every time down the floor.
It has been a ridiculous three weeks in terms of my thought process. During all that time when the Final Four was going on, flying out to California, Hall of Fame, all of that, there was a lot going on personally for me where I'm trying to sort out how long am I going to do this? Where am I going to go from here? What else am I going to do?
I think this is the first time in my life I have been rendered speechless.
Last year I didn't like the fact that you never what the starting lineup was going to be. I'd like it settled by the time the first game comes around. I'd like to be settled. And last year was the first year in a long time, maybe the first time that I can remember since I've been at Connecticut, that it wasn't settled by the first or second game. It never seemed to get itself settled.