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
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.
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 think she's taking it pretty seriously. You know, it's that time of the year.
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.
Just having that makes everybody else around you a lot better. So I'm looking forward to that. We haven't had that in a while. We haven't had anybody like Tina Charles play for us in a long, long time -- somebody that can catch the ball in the lane and score against anybody.
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.
Whether it's Phoenix or whether it's any other team in that league, they're not going to offer me more money than I'm making at Connecticut. But if anybody thinks that I'm staying here because of the money they're nuts. I didn't come here for the money and I'm not going to stay here for the money. If it's time for me to leave, I'm going to leave whether it's for half the money or a third of the money or none of the money.
Whereas before, we didn't know whether we could go on a run like that and get up big on some teams. Now we know that. And we also know that if they come back, we've got what it takes to finish the job. Whether we do or not next time we're in that situation, I don't know. I don't think anybody comes through 100 percent of the time. ... As long as we have a chance to win with three minutes to go, I like our chances.
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.
It's not anything that you could ever prepare yourself for. And for someone who spends a lot of time talking, it really is the first thing that really renders you speechless because you just don't know how to express in words what it would mean to be part of this fraternity. And I still haven't figured out how to say it. All I can do is just look around bug-eyed at all the people that are here.
Any time you go on the road and you have to make plays to win and you do make them, it's a huge confidence booster.