UConn’s Finest: Geno Auriemma’s Iconic Journey

Ucon­n’s finest: A pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to the great­est fig­ures in all of UConn History.

Today’s episode of UCon­n’s Finest, Kevin Baf­four, is joined by George velky, Kelti John­son, and Christi Throw­er. Where we high­light and ded­i­cat­ed the phe­nom­e­nal coach­ing career from UConn head wom­en’s bas­ket­ball coach, and 11 nation­al cham­pi­onships win­ner Geno Auriemma.

Exter­nal Resources:
Script
Notes/Sources

Tran­script:

• George
  • 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 Velky and I’m here with…

• “Christy”
• “Kelti” 
• “And Kevin” Im cur­rent­ly call­ing in.
• George:
• -Kevin Can you do that again the phone call broke off a lit­tle bit
• Kevin:“And Kevin” Im cur­rent­ly call­ing in.
• George
  • 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, Geno Auriemma.
• Christi
  • Alright, let’s get right into it!
  • Geno Auriem­ma was born Lui­gi Auriem­ma in Motel­la, Italy – in the moun­tains about fifty miles east of Naples. His fam­i­ly emi­grat­ed from Italy to the US when he was young, only sev­en years old. They set­tled in Nor­ris­town, Penn­syl­va­nia, a Philadel­phia suburb. 
• Kevin
  • You know Christi, Geno didn’t even start play­ing bas­ket­ball until he was a sopho­more in high school. His first love was base­ball. That being said, It was on the high school bas­ket­ball court where he found an appre­ci­a­tion for coach­ing. His bas­ket­ball coach, Bud­dy Gardler was the per­son who inspired Auriem­ma to pur­sue a career in the field. Geno mod­eled his coach­ing style after Gardler’s —— No-non­sense and tough, but to the point. 
• Kelti:
  • 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. 
• George
  • Once he grad­u­at­ed from col­lege, he became an assis­tant coach at St. Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty for a short stint, then back to his own high school for an assis­tant coach­ing job for the boys bas­ket­ball team. He built his resume up, then even­tu­al­ly found his way into a big boy coach­ing job, as an assis­tant at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia. 
• Christi:
  • He was at UVA for only a few sea­sons, but he showed his skill in recruit­ment in that time. After three sea­sons, he recruit­ed six high school all-amer­i­cans, won the ACC con­fer­ence and had the team play­ing in the NCAA tournament.
• Kevin:
  • It was his suc­cess with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia team that caught the eye of UConn. He met with John Ton­er and Pat Meis­er, the ath­let­ic direc­tors of UConn at the time, and they offered him the head coach­ing job with the wom­ens team. 
  • Geno actu­al­ly took the head coach­ing job with­out ever even see­ing the facil­i­ties or the cam­pus. He took the job because of vibes and oppor­tu­ni­ty. It turned out to be the best deci­sion of his life. 

• Kelti:
  • Geno Auriem­ma start­ed coach­ing at UConn in 1985 – this upcom­ing sea­son will be his 40th year coach­ing the team – Forty years! 
  • In that time he’s amassed an incred­i­ble 1213  wins and only 162 losses 
• Kevin
  • Fun fact for you Kelti, Geno is actu­al­ly only four wins away from the all-time coach­ing win record in men’s and wom­ens NCAA basketball 
• Christi
  • Wow…. 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 fig­ured it was already him. 
• Kevin
  • Tara Van­derveer does. She coached at Ida­ho and Ohio State before fin­ish­ing her career at Stand­ford. She coached for 45 sea­sons before she retired last April 
• George
  • Yeah when I was read­ing about Van­derveer I saw that she had three nation­al cham­pi­onships com­pared to the 11 that Auriem­ma has tak­en the Huskies to. Its Crazy to think that Geno has 11 in 39 years. He wins a nation­al cham­pi­onship like once every four years, and he has been coach­ing since the 80s, Nuts. 
• Kelti
  • You know his suc­cess hasn’t just come from UConn either. He has coached as an assis­tant and as head coach of the USA Olympic Wom­ens teams in three dif­fer­ent Olympics. In his time coach­ing for team USA he has only lost ONCE… He has fifty wins and three olympic gold medals. 
• Christi
  • Turns out he is also one of the most dec­o­rat­ed coach­es of all time – what a shock­er – he has been the AP bas­ket­ball coach nine times. 
• Kevin
  • The AP? Like the Asso­ci­at­ed Press? 
• Christi
  • Yes, that AP. He has also been named the Nai­smith Coach of the Year eight times, the WBCA Nation­al Coach of the Year 7 times, Big East Coach of the Year 11 times and Amer­i­can Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence coach of the year 4 times. 
• George
  • Wow, I’m sur­prised he hasn’t been named coach of the decade yet. 
• Kelti
  • No kid­ding!
• Kevin
  • He’s def­i­nite­ly one of the GOAT’s. In his 39 years coach­ing the lady Huskies, he’s only had 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 have nev­er looked back. 
• Kelti
  • I think he might be one of the best recruiters of all time. He land­ed the top recruit in last years class, Sarah Strong, as a replace­ment for Aliya Edwards. The 6 foot 2 cen­ter from North Car­oli­na chose UConn over two home­town squads, Duke and the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Carolina. 
• George
  • Wow that’s impressive 
• Christi
  • Thats right! Geno is such a skilled recruiter that he con­vinced a South­ern girl to move hun­dreds of miles from home and come to… Storrs Connecticut. 
• George
  • Yeah now that I think of that… He must be a con­vinc­ing dude. He per­suades peo­ple from all over the world to come to Bum Fuck Connecticut. 
• Kevin
  • Not only that. He gets them to love it. He con­vinces them to fall in love and win with this stu­pid lit­tle farm town. 
• George
  • He’s an expert at find­ing tal­ent alright. Along­side Strong, he brought in the num­ber four over­all recruit, Allie Ziebell, and the num­ber 18 over­all recruit, Mor­gan Cheli. 
• Kelti
  • He con­sis­tent­ly gets the top girls in the coun­try. In 2020 he signed Paige Bueck­ers, 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 1, Azzi Fudd. 
• Christi
  • 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… 
• George
  • Some of the best play­ers of all time start­ed their careers with Geno in Storrs. Bre­an­na Stew­art, Maya Moore, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Rebec­ca Lobo are just head­lin­ers under the Geno Auriem­ma tree. 
• Kevin
  • WOW. All of those women are Hall of Fame, all-time great WNBA play­ers. I guess it speaks to Geno’s skill as a coach and a char­ac­ter-builder with these players. 
• Kelti
  • 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.” 
• Christi
  • I’m impressed. You’d think a guy that has had so much suc­cess would have a big­ger ego. It’s cool that he gives a lot of cred­it of the players. 
• Kevin
  • Yeah, he has had great play­ers and put togeth­er some insane teams. And they won – A lot. Between 2014 and 2017 they went on a 111-game win­ning streak, the longest in NCAA his­to­ry, Mens and womens. 
• George
  • 111 games? Thats unheard of? How many days did they go with­out a loss? 
• Kevin
  • 865. The Huskies were on their way to a fifth straight nation­al cham­pi­onship when Mis­sis­sip­pi State hit a shot at the buzzer to move past UConn in the nation­al semi­fi­nals. Mis­sis­sip­pi State would lose to South Car­oli­na in the finals a few days later. 
• Kelti
  • 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. 
  • Bre­an­na Stew­art, Mori­ah Jef­fer­son and Mor­gan Tuck went First, Sec­ond, and Third over­all in the WNBA Draft. 
• Christi
  • Wow, I guess that just speaks to Geno’s abil­i­ty to get the most out of his play­ers and moti­vate them to do well. 
• George
  • He gets involved in the com­mu­ni­ty too. 
  • He owns an Ital­ian Restau­rant in Man­ches­ter, CT, about 25 min­utes from Gam­pel Pavil­lion, where the bas­ket­ball teams play on cam­pus at UConn. 
• Christi
  • I heard about that! I was read­ing about it and I guess he opened it in 2019 and it has been going strong since then. It serves tra­di­tion­al Ital­ian Cui­sine and has a nice wine selection. 
• Kevin
  • Yeah, a nice wine selec­tion… Let’s talk about that. I went to check out the web­site and he has over 100 dif­fer­ent options for wine, it’s true, I counted. 
  • There are wines from across the world. Cal­i­for­nia, France, Italy, New Zealand, New York, Spain, Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, Neva­da, Aus­tralia and Argentina. 
• Kelti
  • It’s Fun­ny… All those places but he doesn’t serve any wine from Con­necti­cut. I guess this state is good for bas­ket­ball, but the grapes are shitty. 
  • 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 Ital­lian Restaurant. 
  • His Ital­ian wines are sort­ed by Region, he even sells his own wine. 
• George
  • I saw that! I looked into it because that’s kind of a cool side hus­tle, you know? How many guys do you know that have a vine­yard as a hobby. 
  • He is a wine lover, thats for sure, he even has a quote on his web­site that reads, “In my opin­ion, Ital­ian wines are the best in the world for taste, vari­ety and val­ue – and my own wines are real­ly, real­ly good.”
  • His Win­ery is in Puglia, Italy, which isn’t real­ly where he is from in Italy, but I’m sure he’s hap­py to have his own vine­yard in Italy. 
• Christi
  • I saw on his web­site that he also sells pas­ta sauce. 
  • He has a toma­to basil sauce, that says it is his mother’s recipe, and he also has a Fra Diavo­lo sauce. 
  • I guess when you make mil­lions of dol­lars it’s fun to do things like start restau­rants and vineyards. 
• Kevin
  • Geno actu­al­ly signed a new exten­sion with the Huskies in June. The new con­tract, worth $18.7 mil­lion over the next five years, makes him the high­est-paid coach in wom­en’s bas­ket­ball, includ­ing the WNBA. 
• Kelti
  • He doesn’t just make mon­ey though, he rais­es it for the com­mu­ni­ty as well. 
  • He hap­pi­ly hosts the annu­al, “Geno 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 Courant, the tour­na­ment raised $675,000 dol­lars in 2023 and has raised over $4 mil­lion over the past 22 years. 
  • The tour­na­ment rais­es mon­ey for the Con­necti­cut Chil­drens Med­ical Cen­ter and Chil­drens Mir­a­cle Net­work, the same caus­es that UConn stu­dents raise mon­ey for through Huskython. 
• George
  • Con­clu­sion:
    • Talk about a guy that has done, and con­tin­ues to do so much for the state of Connecticut. 
    • That’s it for todays episode, I’d love to give a spe­cial thanks to Pro­fes­sor Jones, for giv­ing us the time need­ed to do a great job, and to Tikeyah Whit­tle, for show­ing us how to use the pod­cast­ing equip­ment. I hope every­one has a great day, we are UConn’s FInest.
    • Kevin
  • I’m out

Time­Stamp: 00:31:38