UConn’s Finest: The Legacy Of Geno Aurriema

[00:01]
Hel­lo and wel­come to UCon­n’s finest the pod­cast where we dis­cuss some of the great­est fig­ures and alum­ni in UConn his­to­ry. I’m your host George felk and I’m here with Christie 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 oriya­ma. All right, let’s get into it Gino Rima was born Lui­gi Rama in motela Italy in the moun­tains about 50 miles east of Naples. I had no idea who was from Italy.

[00:38]
Or that is born Lui­gi. You know, my first ques­tion was was his broth­er’s name Mario. Yeah his fam­i­ly emi­grat­ed from Italy to the US when he was a young only sev­en years old and they set­tled in Nor­ris­town, Penn­syl­va­nia a Philadel­phia sum­mer, you know Christy.

[01:03]
His coach­ing career began when he was a col­lege stu­dent. He coached the Bish­op McDe­vitt High School in Har­ris­burg, Pennsylvania.

[01:28]
He actu­al­ly com­mut­ed an hour to coach the bas­ket­ball team at the time. He was study­ing polit­i­cal sci­ence at Westch­ester State Uni­ver­si­ty. Once he grad­u­at­ed from col­lege. He became an assis­tant coach at Saint 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. Yeah. He was a UVA for only a few sea­sons, but he showed us skill and Recruit­ment and that time and after Daisy Sea­sons, he recruit­ed six high school all-amer­i­cans and won the ACC con­fer­ence and had the team play­ing and the NCAA tournament.

[02:37]
Start­ed coach­ing at UConn in 1985. This upcom­ing sea­son will be his 40th year coach­ing the team 40 years in that time. He’s a mask and incred­i­ble 1,213 wins in only 162 loss­es. You know, what’s crazy just

[02:58]
Like I have for each oth­er, you know actu­al­ly only four ones away from the all-time coach­ing wins record and the men’s and wom­en’s NCAA bas­ket­ball. Oh only four wins away. I had a mess is the great­est coach of all time. But when he gets those wins it’ll solid­i­fies Lega­cy who has the most wins. I mean, I fig­ured it was already him.

[03:22]
I don’t know fin­ish­ing her career at Stan­ford. She coached for 45 Sea­sons before she retired last night. Yeah, when I was read­ing about van­der­vere, I saw that she had three nation­al cham­pi­onships com­pared to the 11th at Ore­gon has tak­en the Huskies too. It is crazy to think that you know as 11 cham­pi­onships and less than 40 years, you know, 39 years of coach­ing. He’s wins Nation­al Cham­pi­onship like once every four years and he’s been coach­ing since the 80s. It’s not 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 and it’s time coach­ing for Team USA. He is only lost once he has 50 wins in three Olympic gold medals. Yeah turns out he’s like all so one of the most dec­o­rat­ed coach­es of all time. What a shock­er has been like the AP bas­ket­ball coach nine times the nation Smith.

[04:22]
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 four times. Well, I’m sur­prised he has­n’t been named coach of the decade yet. No kidding.

[04:48]
Guys, 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. I mean like dinos such a sil­ver cre­ator that he con­vinced us South­ern Girl to move hunch­es a mouse from home and come to snores Con­necti­cut. Yeah. 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 com­plain bum. Fuck, Connecticut.

[05:29]
Dis­tance to love it. He con­vinces them to fall in love and when this stu­pid lit­tle farm count, he’s an expert at find­ing Tal­ent already along­side strong. He brought in the num­ber four over­all recruit Ali zbell and num­ber 18 over­all recruit Mor­gan Shel­ley. This year’s class. He con­sis­tent­ly gets the top girls in the coun­try in 2020. He signed page back­ers. One of the most high­ly-tout­ed prospects ever in the most talked about wom­en’s high school play­er of all time in 2021. He brought in anoth­er num­ber one Ozzy Fudd not only does he know how to con­vince ath­letes to come play for the Husky. 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. So overall

[06:11]
Yeah, some of the best play­ers of all time start­ed their careers with Geno and stores ran a Stew­art Maya Moore Sue bird Diana Tau­rus and Rebec­ca. Lobo are just Head­lin­ers under the genome tree. Wow.

[06:23]
All those women are NBA play­ers, I guess as a coach and a great Builder would be play­ers. Well, it does­n’t take all the cred­it him­self either one of his quotes that I read was your phi­los­o­phy and bas­ket­ball will get you to a cer­tain point after that. You need indi­vid­u­als to take you to the next step. I’m impressed. You think a guy that has had like so much suc­cess what­ev­er the big­ger ego. I mean, it’s cool that he gives a lot of cred­it to the play­ers. Yeah. He had great play­ers and they won a lot 2014 and 27 teams. That’s unheard of how many days did they go with­out a loss?

[07:23]
A few days lat­er 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. Wow, I guess just speaks to his abil­i­ty to get the most out of his play­ers and moti­vate them to do. Well he gets involved in the com­mu­ni­ty too. He owns an Ital­ian restau­rant and Man­ches­ter Con­necti­cut about 25 min­utes from gam­pel Pavil­ion where the bas­ket­ball team plays on cam­pus at UConn. This isn’t his first restau­rant though. He opened one up at Mohe­gan 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’s just fil­tered out, you know, no one want­ed to get the food and I read a arti­cle with a Wine mag­a­zine of all things about his his place at Mohe­gan Sun and they asked what kind of food he was gonna have and

[08:23]
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 to restau­rants where there’s three dif­fer­ent types of Cuisines? I don’t know but if it’s good food, it can’t be bad. It must have not been good food then because the restau­rant did­n’t last long I did hear about the Ital­ian restau­rant 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 and has a nice ones elec­tion. Yeah.

[09:03]
Has over 100 dif­fer­ent options for one. It’s true. I count­ed there. Are we from across the world Cal­i­for­nia France Italy New York. Stay­ing Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon Data Aus­tralia Argenti­na name it it’s fun­ny all those places but he does­n’t serve any­one from Con­necti­cut. I guess this data 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. It’s Ital­ian wines are sort­ed by region. He even sells his own wine. 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 is 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 agree more not by a civ­il and his own wines are real­ly good accord­ing to him­self. Yeah. He’s got wines from all over Italy Trent.

[10:03]
No for you only Bea­t­le Cam­pana, which com­pa­ny is the region where you know him­self is from a few more wines from Pied­mont Bvl­gari, Sici­ly the Fin­ger Lakes and Upstate New York Tus­cany Provence, France all over the place. Wow.

[10:19]
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 of the heel of the boot if you will the regions on the Adri­at­ic Sea, but I’m sure he’s hap­py to have his own Vine­yard in Italy. I don’t think he’s stressed about being in his home­town. I won­der how many times he goes up there. Yeah. That’s a good ques­tion. I doubt he real­ly goes in sea­son but part of me won­ders if he’s prob­a­bly spends weeks or months out there in the sum­mer and good life. Yeah. I know if I owned a Vine­yard and Italy I would spend plen­ty of time there nev­er leave. Yeah, hon­est­ly, I’m sur­prised he signed a new deal. Yeah. I won­der how much he’s mak­ing from The Vine­yard, you know, I could­n’t find that much about his wines and what I did is there like 10 to 20 Dol­lar Bot­tles. Like, how can I get my hands on one of these? I don’t know. I looked down total wines web­site and there was noth­ing in Con­necti­cut that I could find just sur­prised because you think that’s where he marks it right? Maybe you have to start imag­ine that love you. Awe­some, you know, if a beard a game costs 12 dol­lars, I won­der how much you know.

[11:19]
Sip­ping a glass and gam­ble Pavil­ion, you know why it’s prob­a­bly a secret to his longevi­ty is a glass of wine with din­ner. That’s what LeBron does.

[11:30]
I mean when you’re that risk like you can have like an expen­sive steak caviar every day. So do you know how much a bot­tle of wine costs I could­n’t find a defin­i­tive thing, but it was around like 14 to 20 dol­lars online rea­son­able, but I mean real­ly nice wine cuss hun­dreds of dol­lars. So I don’t know maybe maybe huge­ly Italy isn’t the best wine grow­ing region. Maybe he needs to open up a Vine­yard and the Fin­ger Lakes. It sound as a web­site. I 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 frog diavo­lo sauce. Yeah. No, actu­al­ly, that’s kind of good. Right? Yeah. I think the fraud you’ve always sauce is a spicy toma­to sauce, which to be hon­est. It sounds bet­ter than the basil but I like spicy things. Yeah, I guess when you make mil­lions of dol­lars, it’s like fun to do side quests like start restau­rants and Vine­yards. Yeah. Sure.

[12:31]
Kevin you were telling me before the episode that you know just signed a new deal. Yeah.

[12:35]
We just recent­ly signed a new exten­sion with the Huskies in June. The new con­tract was 13.7 mil­lion like this goes on for like next five years, which be send­ing the high­est paid coach in the wom­en’s basketball.

[12:47]
And includ­ing the WNBA. Wow, he does­n’t just make mon­ey though. He rais­es it for the com­mu­ni­ty as well. You hap­pi­ly hosts the annu­al Gino for the kids char­i­ty Golf Tour­na­ment. This June was a 22nd instal­la­tion of the event. It was host­ed at the Hart­ford Golf Club, accord­ing to the Hart­ford Courant the tour­na­ment raised 675 thou­sand dol­lars in 2023 and is raised over four 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 Don. I won­der how much she know golfs. You know, like what is hand­i­capped is a Bet­ty golf slot on the offices and Lord knows I do I will buy it at like he does go because he already has like all The Vine­yards stuff and restau­rants like I would buy that he’d do a lot of things maybe his next side quest is open­ing up his own courts, I would play Maybe in Con­necti­cut this time. Yeah. It does­n’t seem like you want to invest any­thing into Con­necti­cut except for fail­ing businesses.

[14:01]
Is like Mor­gan Shel­ley just play­ers over­all antic­i­pate just be will­ing to Show­case a lot to Ari­ana because there you know, he’s like a good coach so it’s like, okay.

[14:11]
Come in. It’s like let me show­ing what I got be a part of, you know, one of the great­est. Yeah, 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’s still sat and said that their suc­cess isn’t all because of him. It’s because they’re telling us well, I can’t get over that. He had no train­ing. Yeah, it’s it’s not not to think about because nowa­days, you know peo­ple that coach their grad­u­ate assis­tants, but before that their stu­dent man­agers and after their grad­u­ate assis­tance, 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 and he’s just like one punch man out here. Yeah. He had one sea­son at Saint Joe’s three sea­sons at UVA both of which were assis­tant jobs. And then the UConn ads and liked him and said, we’re get­ting Good Vibes. We want you when he first talked to the ads they real­ly did like

[15:12]
Just plan of action where he was play­ing 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 belt them up from a team. That was­n’t that good. I mean wom­en’s sports at that time were real­ly not heard of as some­thing that was it was­n’t big. It was­n’t like tak­ing it. Seri­ous­ly. Yeah like that.

[15:34]
It’s real­ly inter­est­ing how he was able to shine some light on the sport for women. Yeah, he’s been a 28 straight sweet 16s. 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 oh it was 26 8 years ago. What’s that 1990?

[16:06]
19 well 28. I’m a jour­nal­ism major not a math major.

[16:12]
2018.96 1996 to pull my cal­cu­la­tor out. So it’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. I mean what Caitlin Clark want­ed to play for UConn? Yeah right from she played at Iowa. Yeah page is from Min­neso­ta Ozzy’s from Mary­land. I think you know stubs from years past Nico mule. Yeah. She was from Croa­t­ia. Where the hell did he find her? Is there a rea­son that late you can’t miss the bas­ket­ball school bas­ket­ball cap­i­tal of the world. Yeah. None of my friends that go to these oth­er schools, you know, big schools Big Ten schools Big East schools. None of them brag about wom­en’s sports and I do because we’ve got the Yukon wom­en’s bas­ket­ball team and I think that’s a tes­ta­ment to what Geno’s done with the pro­gram. He is. Oh my God, he’s one of the sports

[17:12]
great­est coach­es of all what I think is real­ly inter­est­ing is you know, he’s mak­ing like three and a half mil­lion dol­lars this year. And he’s the high­est paid wom­en’s bas­ket­ball coach in the world even in the WNBA like the pro­fes­sion­al League the top coach­es only make about a mil­lion dol­lars. So he’s mak­ing three times more than the top coach­es in the top League just because of what he does at the school.

[17:39]
Train or two or you know cul­ture to real yeah with nil, you know, you think about the oppor­tu­ni­ty that col­lege stu­dents have to make mon­ey in col­lege. Now if I’m a wom­en’s bas­ket­ball play­er. I’m going to UConn for that NL oppor­tu­ni­ty, you know, you’re gonna have if you’re the best play­er in the nation, you’re gonna have the best chance to make prob­a­bly thou­sands maybe hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. If you’re real­ly good just because of the brand name of Yukon that Gino or I am a cre­at­ed. Yeah. I mean, you know some spon­sor­ships that page has page has a Gatorade spon­sor­ship which only a hand­ful of pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes have I think she’s a Nike flea and then you see your like going to these fash­ion shows being like an icon for women absolute­ly killing it. Her Insta­gram is fire. Yeah page back­ers has two mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers and on her and her Insta­gram bio. She has her spon­sor­ships tagged her main ones and they are Nike Gatorade bows. Check Madi­son Reed and Ver­i­zon. Do you guys fol­low page on Insta­gram? Yes, of course me too. She’s

[18:38]
Prob­a­bly the most polar­iz­ing play­er that she knows ever coached. I mean her and Caitlin Clark have real­ly put wom­en’s bas­ket­ball on the map, you know to the point where it’s tele­vised nation­al­ly where before you know, you might not even see the round of 64 games and the wom­en’s NCAA tour­na­ment. You’re only going to see this sweet 16 and Beyond because peo­ple just did­n’t care. Yeah. I mean was­n’t the Iowa Yukon that that game was like it was the most viewed wom­an’s bas­ket­ball game on record. How many views did have Kel­ty 14.2 mil­lion on ESPN? Wow, it’s it’s crazy to me to think that over 14 mil­lion peo­ple watched that game and there’s only three and a half mil­lion peo­ple from Con­necti­cut and even few­er from Iowa. So it’s not just peo­ple from those home states that are root­ing for their home teams. It’s peo­ple Nation­wide that are watch­ing the sport to see these awe­some play­ers do well Gino’s still going and no one has a lega­cy. That’s quite like his well, 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.

[19:39]
Need­ed to do a great job and all to Tokyo Whit­tle for show­ing us how to use the pod­cast and equipment.

[19:45]
I hope every­one has a great day and thank you for lis­ten­ing. Were you Con­n’s finest?