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
Fair or unfair, at Connecticut it's not good enough just to win. There's a perception that if we don't go to the Final Four, it's a bad season. I want the players to understand that the one constant in our program, is that we want to make sure we play hard and have fun.
I think players sometimes don?t understand fully the amount of responsibility on their shoulders. As a senior, you have to take on that responsibility every day -- practice, games, travel, locker room, you name it. I think in the Big East tournament, they really, really, really did that. They took it to heart and made sure all the little things that lead to winning were taken care of. I really admire them for that.
I hate it because there's too much dead time. They don't do anything. I mean if sleeping was a sport these guys would be first-team All-American. So what happens is when there's so much dead time you've got to try to get them to understand that you've got to fill that time wisely.
We're quite unpredictable. I think the kids understand that. We go five possessions where we look really good, and then we go five where the kids on the bench go, 'What was that?' We're still getting there. We're not there yet.
You don't really understand what winning is and really don't appreciate what winning is until you've had your share of losing.
It's not like you ever lose confidence or give up on people. I think players sometimes don't understand fully the amount of responsibility on their shoulders. As seniors, you have to take on that responsibility.
They say you really don't understand what winning is. You really don't appreciate what winning is until you've had your share of losing. I think the opposite is also true. I think you can't quite fathom how much losing hurts when you have had as many chances to win, that we had, over the years.
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.