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
Probably another week and a half, (the trainers) said. That's the word that I got, another week and a half. They don't want to rush her back. She did it once. She hurried up to get back on the court because she's been out for so long.
We're a horrible rebounding team, especially when we play with four guards. So we're not exactly gangbusters in that area. We're going to have to, obviously, do a much better job of that next week (at No. 1 Tennessee).
The alternative would be that you're dealing with this thing all year long. A week she's good, a week she's bad, and back and forth. I'm hopeful that by keeping her out those two weeks that we got to the root of the problem and fixed it. But, again, we'll never know. We'll just keep our fingers crossed.
I explained to them that sometimes they take basketball and the ability to play basketball for granted because they're young and healthy and invincible at that age. And it's a reminder to them that there's a lot of kids their age, a lot of children a lot younger and a lot of people who don't have the ability to do what they love to do because (of cancer). Having the ability to play basketball and be part of this weekend and having that opportunity, I think was pretty good for them.
We're in a good bracket with good teams like everybody else is. Say all you want about who's in a tough bracket, who's not? The bottom line is, starting this weekend everybody will get to a chance to prove whether they belong there or not.
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 don't think we forced the ball and tried to make plays that are hard to make. We tried to keep it simple. You look at it, how many turnovers should you have when you play Albany? Seven is a good number. If it were 17, I'd be really disappointed. But those seven could easily be 17 or 20 next week against a better team. You hope it gets better every game where our guys see things.
If you would have asked me how would I want it to go ... it went exactly the way I was hoping it would go. I was happy for the kids today because I?m not usually one to think in these terms, but if you do what we did on Monday anywhere else in the country, it?s not a big deal. But what we did on Monday can really scar you for a really long time if you play in this program because you?re going to hear about it every minute of every day, everywhere you go from everybody. You have to have pretty tough skin to survive in this environment. I was really proud of our guys to come back after the kind of week that we had to do what we did (Sunday).
I knew we would find a different Notre Dame team than the one we played at their place. I knew we would have to play a lot better than we did there. Our post players came up really big. It went exactly the way I thought it would except for the last five or six minutes, considering the kind of week we had.
The first week or so is not bad. It's those last 10 days where they've been cooped up. That's when it's awful. So, for now, the novelty hasn't worn off yet. But it's not an ideal situation. It really isn't.
We weren't sure whether or not it was real serious or mildly serious or whatever. When we got back, it was X-rayed and there's no fractures. It's just a bad ankle sprain and she's definitely out for Saturday and then we'll take it from there.
We got the big lead and we had a chance, when pressure came, to really make some plays to extend it. But we let one play lead to another to another to another. It just got completely away from us. I guess credit their defense, but I was just looking at the stat sheet.
I've seen (Strother) go through stretches where nothing's gone in, but she had that one stretch where she made everything. It all evens itself out, I think. I think all she needs is a couple to drop. ... She'll come around.
The strength of your league is what is going on in the middle. We have always been good at the top. But we will have teams finishing 10th, 11th 12th in our league who are pretty darned good, and I don't know that anybody else has that.