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
I think because of Diana (Taurasi playing for the Mercury), circumstances are different in this one, ... Maybe people sense that the climate is different at Connecticut than it was in the past.
Renee Montgomery had maybe the best game she's had since she's been at Connecticut. And I told her (Monday) she should transfer. I asked her, 'How does Mel Thomas have more steals than you? You've just got to get more involved. You've got to do more.' So (Tuesday) she's attacking the basket. She's stripping kids. She's playing like a basketball player. That makes all the difference in the world when you have guards that play like that.
That would be pretty ironic, wouldn't it? Maybe it's meant to be that way. Hard to say, but it would be pretty neat. How about she's in the starting lineup at the Final Four and knocks in the first play of the game and scores 30 and is the MVP and rides off into sunset? You never know how it's going to be.
Today we played almost well enough to win the game. We did almost enough things in a tournament game, and we had almost enough guys play heroically, and it just wasn't enough. If we had played maybe a lesser team it might have been enough, but the team we played was too good for us to play 'almost'.
To her credit, Will?s hung in there this year when it could have gotten away from her. Now you?re looking at a possibility of (15) more games, if you?re lucky enough to play that long, so maybe somebody like Will in the next month can salvage something pretty darn good out of something that looked like it was really terrible.
I would say for 32 minutes we were pretty good. Six or seven minutes I think in that first half maybe weren't that good, but I think this was as complete a game at both ends of the floor as we've had in a while.
I sense that this year, there have been more near-upsets and more great moments in this tournament than maybe the last five combined. Which is a sign, I think, that we are going in the right direction.
Our defense bails us out a lot of times. Say what you will about both Rutgers games and how bad we were offensively, we had a chance to win. I used to have teams that made every play, every time. Now we're looking at a team that maybe doesn't have the ability to make every play, every time. But what we have to do is make certain plays at key times. If we can do that, we'll be all right.
Some teams would have maybe gone from 17 down to 27 down right away. That says a lot about (Louisville).
We're 18-2 and it doesn't feel that way. I don't know why. Maybe because you know how many games are really hard to play in and you just keep thinking, 'This is really hard.' If someone figures out what we're not good at, it's good night, Irene.
There's a lot of soul searching that has to go on. Maybe we just don't have it in us. Maybe we're just not good enough right now.
I think the game was pretty much indicative of what a lot of what this season has been all about. Nothing's come easy. You can't count on anything any more. Everything's a struggle, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.
Last year I didn't like the fact that you never what the starting lineup was going to be. I'd like it settled by the time the first game comes around. I'd like to be settled. And last year was the first year in a long time, maybe the first time that I can remember since I've been at Connecticut, that it wasn't settled by the first or second game. It never seemed to get itself settled.
It's different than it was two years ago. People buy into teams and into personalities. We were coming off a national championship and we had the dominant personality in the country. Now we're coming off losing in the Sweet 16 and we have a bunch of nice kids that are just happy to be here. Maybe I'm going to have to rile some people up, start saying and doing stuff that stirs the pot a bit.