Exploring distinguished UConn personalities, one episode at a time.
This week, George, Kevin, Kelti and Christi dive into the career of Geno Auriemma, head coach of the UConn Women’s Basketball Team. Auriemma is one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, we explore how he turned a basketball team into one of the longest-running dynasties in the sports history. Learn about his early career started, his coaching accolades and what he is doing outside of basketball.
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Script
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Transcript:
Speaker 1 0:00
George, hello and welcome to UConn finest, the podcast where we discuss some of the greatest figures in alumni in UConn history. I’m your host, George velky, and I’m here with Christy Kelty
Speaker 2 0:17
and Kevin. I’m currently calling in
Speaker 1 0:21
today we are going to discuss one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, the man who has cemented UConn women’s basketball as an institution, Gino ariema.
Speaker 3 0:31
All right, let’s get into it. So Gino ariema was born Luigi ariemma in motella, Italy, in the mountains, about 50 miles east of Naples. His family immigrated from Adelaide to the US when he was young, only seven years old, and they settled in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. You
Speaker 2 0:56
know, you know, Christy, you know, didn’t even start playing until he was a sophomore in high school. His first love was baseball. Actually, that being said, it was on the high school basketball court where he found his appreciation for coaching. His basketball coach, actually, Bucky gardler, was the person who inspired Ariana to pursue a career in the field. Geno model his coaching style after gardler, no nonsense and tell us about you know, straight to the point
Speaker 4 1:23
his coaching career began when he was a college student. He coached the bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He actually commuted an hour to coach the basketball team at the time, he was studying political science at West Chester State University. Once
Speaker 1 1:39
he graduated from college, he became an assistant coach at St Joseph’s University for a short stint, and then back to his own high school for an assistant coaching job for the boys basketball team. He slowly built his resume up, then he eventually found his way into a big boy coaching job as an assistant at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 3 1:58
Yeah, he was at UVA for only a few seasons, but he showed his skill and recruitment in that time, and after three seasons, he recruited six high school all Americans and won the ACC conference and had the team playing in the NCAA Tournament
Speaker 2 2:21
success with the University of Virginia team that caught the eye of UConn. He met with John toner and Pat ambassador, the athletic director, directors of UConn at the time, and they offered him the head of the coach job with the women’s team. You know, actually took the head coaching job without ever even seeing the facility or the campus. He took the job because of the vibes and the opportunity. He turned out to be the best decision of his life.
Speaker 4 2:50
Do you know Ariana started coaching at UConn in 1985 this upcoming season will be his 40th year coaching the team. 40 years in that time, he’s amassed an incredible 1213 wins and only 162 losses. You
Speaker 2 3:08
know what’s crazy? Just a fun fact I have for you, actually only four wins away from the all time coaching win record and men’s and women’s NCAA basketball.
Speaker 3 3:21
Oh, only four wins away. I had him as the greatest coach of all time, but when he gets those wins, it’ll solidify his legacy. Who has the most wins? I mean, I figured it was already him,
Speaker 2 3:34
Tara vendevier. Does she coach at Idaho and Ohio State before finishing her career at Stanford, she coached for 45 seasons before she retired last April.
Speaker 1 3:45
Yeah, when I was reading about van der Veer, I saw that she had three national championships compared to the 11 that Orem has taken Huskies to. It is crazy to think that, you know, as 11 championships in less than 40 years. You know, 39 years of coaching. He wins national championship like once every four years, and he’s been coaching since the 80s. It’s nuts.
Speaker 4 4:07
You know, his success hasn’t just come from UConn either. He’s coached as an assistant coach and as a head coach of the USA Olympic women’s team in three different Olympics in his time coaching for team USA, he has only lost once. He has 50 wins and three Olympic gold medals. Yeah, turns
Speaker 3 4:25
out he’s like, also one of the most decorated coaches of all the time. Like, what a shocker. He’s been like, the AP basketball coach nine times
Unknown Speaker 4:37
the AP, like, Associate Press, yeah,
Speaker 3 4:40
that, yeah, that, AP, yeah. He’s also been named the Naismith coach of the year eight times, the WBCA National Coach of the Year seven times. The Big East Coach of the Year, 11 times, and American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year for. Four times.
Speaker 1 5:00
Wow. I’m surprised he hasn’t been named Coach of the decade yet.
Unknown Speaker 5:03
No kidding, he’s
Speaker 2 5:04
definitely one of the goals. In his 39 years coaching the ladies Huskies. He’s had only one losing season for real, and it was in his first season. As soon as he got his own recruits on the court, the team started winning, and they haven’t, never looked back.
Speaker 4 5:21
I think he might be one of the best recruiters of all time. He landed the top recruit in last year’s class, Sarah strong as a replacement for Leah Edwards, the six foot two center from North Carolina, chose UConn over two hometown squads, Duke and the University of North Carolina. Wow, that’s impressive.
Speaker 3 5:39
Yeah? Sorry. I mean, like, do you know such a skilled recruiter that he convinced a southern girl to move hunches and miles from home and come to snores Connecticut? Yeah,
Speaker 1 5:51
now that I think of it, he must be a convincing dude. And he persuades people from all over the world, not just the country, to come play in bumfuck Connecticut.
Speaker 2 5:59
Not only that. He gets them to love it. He convinces them to fall in love and win this stupid little farm shop.
Speaker 1 6:05
He’s an expert at finding talent all right. Alongside strong he brought him a number four overall recruit Ali zbil and number 18 overall recruit Morgan Shelley in this year’s class.
Speaker 4 6:15
He consistently gets the top girls in the country in 2020 he signed Paige Beckers, one of the most highly touted prospects ever and the most talked about women’s high school player of all time. In 2021 he brought in another number one, Ozzie Fudd
Speaker 3 6:29
not only does he know how to convince athletes to come play for the Huskies, he knows how to get the best of them. 26 of his players have been drafted in the first round of the WNBA draft, five of them first overall.
Speaker 1 6:44
Yeah, some of the best players of all time started their careers with Gino in stores, Brianna Stewart, Maya Moore, Sue bird, Diana tarusi And Rebecca Lobo are just headliners under the Gino mariametry.
Speaker 2 6:57
Wow, like wow. All those women are holiday all time great WNBA players. I guess it speaks to Gino skills as a coach and a great builder with these players.
Speaker 4 7:09
Well, he doesn’t take all the credit himself either. One of his quotes that I read was your philosophy in basketball will get you to a certain point after that you need individuals to take you to the next step.
Speaker 3 7:20
I’m impressed. You think a guy that has had like so much success would have a bigger ego? I mean, it’s cool that he gives a lot of credit, like to the players.
Speaker 2 7:31
Yeah, he has had great players and put together some insane teams, and they won a lot. Between 2014 and 2017 they went on in 111
Unknown Speaker 7:41
games, winning screen the 111
Speaker 1 7:48
games. That’s unheard of. How many days did they go without a loss?
Speaker 2 7:53
865, the Huskies were on their way to a fifth grade national championship. The Mississippi State hit and shot at the buzzers to move past UConn in the national semifinals. Mississippi State would move to South Carolina in the finals A few days later.
Speaker 4 8:09
The craziest part about that loss was that the Huskies weren’t even supposed to be that good. That season, they lost the three best players on their team and in the country after the 2016 championship, Brianna Stewart, Mariah Jefferson and Morgan Tuck went first, second and third overall in the WNBA draft.
Speaker 3 8:28
Wow. I guess that just speaks to his ability to get the most out of his players and motivate them to do well. Gets
Speaker 1 8:37
involved in the community too. He owns an Italian restaurant in Manchester, Connecticut, about 25 minutes from gamble pavilion, where the basketball team plays on campus at UConn. This isn’t his first restaurant, though. He opened one up at Mohican sun in the early 2000s and it was in a food court, which is kind of weird to think about, and it didn’t succeed. You know, I was looking it up and I couldn’t find anything on it after 2009 so it was only there for a few years, and I guess it just filtered out. You know, no one wanted to get the food. And I read an article with a Wine Magazine, of all things, about his his place at Mohegan Sun, and they asked him what kind of food he was going to have, and his answer was a mix, you know, Italian, Mexican, American, and, you know, from that answer, I could kind of tell that it wasn’t going to be a great restaurant. I don’t know. Do you ever go to restaurants where there’s served three different types of cuisines?
Unknown Speaker 9:33
I don’t know. But if it’s good food, it can’t be bad. It
Speaker 1 9:37
must have not been good food then, because the restaurant didn’t last long?
Speaker 3 9:41
Yeah, no, but I did hear about the Italian restaurant, like the one that’s like 25 minutes from gamble, and I guess he opened it in like 2019 since it’s been going strong since then, and it serves traditional Italian cuisine. Has a nice wine selection,
Speaker 2 10:02
yeah, a nine wine selection. Honestly, let’s talk about that. I want to check out the website, and he has over 100 different options of wine. It’s true, like I counted, there are wines from across the world, California, France, Italy, New Zealand, New York, Spain, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Australia, Argentina.
Speaker 4 10:27
It’s funny all those places, but he doesn’t serve anyone from Connecticut. I guess his state is good for basketball, but not the grapes. What’s cool, though, is that he has a ton of wines from Italy, more from there than anywhere else, which I guess makes sense. He’s Italian, and it’s an Italian restaurant. His Italian wines are sorted by region.
Unknown Speaker 10:46
He even sells his own wine.
Speaker 1 10:49
I saw that. I looked into it, because I think that’s kind of a cool side also, right? How many guys have their own winery? You know? It’s weird that he has that as his own hobby. And I think that speaks to, you know, how much money he’s made for one but also how much he loves wine. He even has a quote on his website that reads, in my opinion, Italian wines are the best in the world. Couldn’t
Unknown Speaker 11:11
agree more, not bias at all.
Unknown Speaker 11:16
And his own wines are really good, according to himself,
Speaker 1 11:20
yeah, he’s got wines from all over Italy. Trentino, Friuli, Piedmont, Fano, Campania, which Campania is the region where Gino himself is from? Few more wines from Piedmont, Bulgaria, Sicily, the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, Tuscany, Provence, France, all over the place, wow. So his own winery is in Puglia, Italy, which isn’t really where he’s from in Italy, it’s on the eastern side of the state, heel of the boot, if you will, right on the regions on the Adriatic Sea. But I’m sure he’s happy to have his own vineyard in Italy. I wonder
Speaker 4 12:03
how many times he goes up there. Yeah, that’s
Speaker 1 12:06
a good question. I doubt he really goes in season, but part of me wonders if he probably spends weeks or months out there in the summer. I know sounds like a good life. Yeah, I know if I owned a vineyard and in Italy, I would spend plenty of time there, never leave. Yeah, honestly, I’m surprised he he signed a new deal.
Speaker 4 12:26
I’d want to retire. Spent my time at my vineyard. Yeah, I
Speaker 3 12:29
don’t need like, millions. I just need, like, a million.
Speaker 4 12:33
I wonder how much he’s making from the vineyard. You
Speaker 1 12:36
know, I couldn’t find that much about his wines. What I did is there, like, 10 to $20 bottles.
Unknown Speaker 12:43
Like, how can I get my hands on one of these?
Speaker 1 12:46
I don’t know. I looked on total wine’s website and there was nothing in Connecticut that I could find, which is surprising, because you’d think that’s where he markets it, right? Imagine that. That’d be awesome. You know, if, if a beer at a game cost $12 I wonder how much wine one
Unknown Speaker 13:02
I’m just a glass,
Unknown Speaker 13:04
sipping a glass and gamble pavilion. It’s
Speaker 1 13:09
probably a secret to his longevity. Is a glass of wine with dinner. That’s what LeBron does.
Speaker 2 13:16
Best way to celebrate. You guys think so? Oh, I
Unknown Speaker 13:19
bet he definitely does.
Speaker 3 13:22
I mean, when you’re that rich, like you can have like an expensive steak, like caviar every day.
Speaker 4 13:29
So do you know how much a bottle of his wine costs?
Speaker 1 13:32
I couldn’t find a definitive thing, but it was around like 14 to $20 online, which makes it fairly reasonable, reasonable, but I mean, really nice. Wine costs hundreds of dollars, so I don’t know, maybe, maybe pews, Italy isn’t the best wine growing region. Maybe he needs to open up a vineyard in the Finger Lakes.
Speaker 3 13:58
Wait a song. Is a website he also like, sells pasta sauce, like he has, like a tomato basil sauce that says it’s his mother’s recipe. And he also had a fra diavalo sauce. Sorry if I butchered that, yeah, no, actually, that’s kind of good. I kind of want to dry it.
Speaker 1 14:18
Yeah. I think the fried divalo sauce is a spicy tomato sauce, which, to be honest, it sounds better than the basil, but I like spicy things.
Speaker 3 14:28
Yeah, I guess when you make millions of dollars, it’s like fun to do like go on side quests, like start restaurants and vineyards.
Speaker 1 14:35
Yeah, sure, Kevin, you were telling me before the episode that you know, just signed a new deal. Yeah, he actually
Speaker 2 14:42
just recently signed a new extension with the Huskies. In June. The new contract was worth 18 point 7 million. Like this goes on for like, the next five years. The highest paid coach in the women’s basketball and including the WNBA. Two.
Speaker 4 15:01
Wow. He doesn’t just make money, though. He raises it for the community as well. He happily hosts the annual Gino for the kids charity golf tournament. This June was the 22nd installation of the event. It was hosted at the Hartford golf club. According to the Hartford current the tournament raised $675,000 in 2023 and has raised over 4 million over the past 22 years. The tournament raises money for the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and Children’s Miracle Network, the same causes that UConn students raise money for through Husky THON.
Unknown Speaker 15:36
I wonder how much Gino golfs,
Speaker 1 15:39
you know, like, what is handicap? Is I bet he golf a lot in the off season. Lord knows I do
Unknown Speaker 15:44
this. Dude does a lot like, I swear I would buy it
Speaker 1 15:49
like, you’d, you’d buy a ticket to the golf tournament. Oh, I
Speaker 3 15:53
meant like, I will buy that like he does like golf. He does like, like the because he already has, like, all the vineyard stuff and restaurants like I would buy that he’d do a lot of things, maybe,
Speaker 4 16:05
maybe his next side quest is opening up his own course I would play, maybe in Connecticut this time.
Speaker 1 16:12
Yeah, it doesn’t, doesn’t seem like he wants to invest anything into Connecticut, except for failing businesses,
Unknown Speaker 16:21
winning teams, though.
Speaker 1 16:22
So do you guys have any expectations for the women’s basketball team this season?
Speaker 4 16:27
I mean, maybe they’ll win. Finally, they’ve been trying. I
Speaker 2 16:32
feel like, like some new players, maybe like Morgan Shelley, like just players overall, anticipate, just like, you know, be willing to showcase a lot to Ariana, because they already know he’s like, a good coach. So it’s like, okay, if they come in, it’s like, let me show what I got be a part of. You know, one of the greatest, yeah.
Speaker 4 16:54
I mean, it seems like Ariana has just a way of speaking with his athletes that really encouraged them. I mean, a lot of them have attributed their success to him, while he still sat and said that their success isn’t all because of him, it’s because of their talent as well.
Speaker 3 17:11
I can’t get over that he had no training. I just can’t get over they just hired him and he was just some guy like off the street with no like resume. Proceeds to become like the biggest coach in history,
Speaker 1 17:24
nuts to think about, because nowadays, you know people that coach their graduate assistants, but before that their student managers, and after their graduate assistants, they oftentimes don’t even have a career in college basketball. They become athletic directors at high schools and stuff. And these guys nowadays are trying so hard, taking all these different pathways to become, you know, a college basketball coach, one season at St Joe’s, three seasons at UVA, both of which were assistant jobs, and then the UConn ad saw him and liked him and said, we’re getting good vibes. We want you.
Speaker 4 18:00
Yeah, no, when he when he first talked to the AEDs, they they really did, like his just plan of action, where he was planning on taking the team, they saw something in him, and clearly they were right, because what he’s done with that team is absolutely amazing. And honestly, like at the time, he kind of just built them up from a team that wasn’t that good. I mean, women’s sports and at that time, were really not heard of as something that was, it wasn’t big, it wasn’t like taking it seriously. Yeah, it’s really interesting how he was able to, I don’t know, shine some light on the sport for women.
Speaker 1 18:35
Yeah, he’s, he’s been to 28 straight sweet sixteens. It’s awesome. Which means he’s, won two games in the NCAA tournament for almost 30 years straight. And there’s almost every other program in the United States struggles just to qualify for the tournament, which is 64 teams, by the way. And he gets to the last 16 of those almost every year. You know, the last time he didn’t make it was 1996 1996
Speaker 2 19:02
or he almost ariyama didn’t coach no women’s basketball, or just, you know, basketball in general, would you guys like be willing to watch, you know, women’s basketball? Give them a chance. I feel like me, personally, it’s like 5050 because, you know, you know, I’m a UConn team. You know, I support UConn team, but like, I feel like oreoma really, kind of just, you know, hit the, you know, hit the light for these players.
Speaker 3 19:24
So like, in the hypothetical, the players would still be there, right? So, like, maybe they wouldn’t hit it without them.
Speaker 1 19:31
I don’t know, they wouldn’t be there if you didn’t recruit them, though. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 19:36
I mean, so much for real.
Speaker 4 19:39
I feel like too just he’s able to bring something to the team. And, you know, obviously we talked about how he’s probably the best recruiter out there. I mean, he’s been able to bring all these amazing women in, but at the same time, like he built the program into something that people want to join, like all of these girls are across. I mean, what Caitlin Clark wanted to. Played for UConn.
Speaker 1 20:01
Yeah, she was from she played at Iowa, yeah. Paige is from Minnesota. Ozzy’s from Maryland. I think you know, studs from years past. Nika mule, yeah, she was from Croatia. Like, where the hell did he find her? For real, is
Speaker 3 20:15
there reason that, like, UConn is like the basketball school, and I think it’s him. Well,
Speaker 1 20:19
I think that’s it for today’s episode of uconn’s finest. I’d love to give a special thanks to Professor Jones for giving us the time needed to do a great job, and also to takia Whittle showing us how to use the podcast equipment. I hope everyone has a great day, and thank you for listening. We’re Yukon’s finest. You
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