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?m not going to put her in a situation where she?s going to play and then next year she?s going to need another (surgery) just to walk; I?m not going to do that.
My initial reaction right now is I saw where it's going to be announced during the Final Four. So if I'm sitting here in Connecticut and there's four teams playing in Boston at the Final Four and I get a phone call, my first reaction is I'm going to be (mad) that I'm not at the Final Four. I can tell you that much. So if I happen to be in Boston with my team and I get that phone call, it'll be kind of a special weekend.
I've been in their situation enough times where you come in and you feel like you've got every answer to every question that comes up. And you know the only way you can lose is if you don't play to your ability. I'm sure Duke feels the same way. (Duke) plays in a manner that leads you to believe they're going to win a national championship.
That first half, they played us as well as any team has played us. I like the way we responded to that situation when they took the lead. I hope that sets us up well for Tuesday night.
I don't remember us ever being in a situation where I thought we had it won, then lost it, thought we had it won, then lost it. It was really an amazing game. It's a shame any of those kids had to be on the other side of that. I would think in the 21 years I've been at Connecticut, I don't remember more than one or two games that turned out like this.
I remember saying that. It was right around the baseball playoffs. I always thought it was pretty cool how a manager would send a pitcher ahead to the next city to wait for his team. I wanted to give Will the opportunity to do that. Why sit around for five months doing nothing? I figured she could be up there scouting out the hotels and restaurants and sightseeing tours for us.
The Brittany thing is a lot better than we could have even imagined. We could be sitting here right now talking about how the meniscus transplant didn't work as well as we liked and it doesn't look like she will play. That was a possibility. And here we're looking at it and - knock on wood - she hasn't had one incident with that since she started being able to do things. That came out way better than we anticipated.
The Brittany thing is a lot better than we could have even imagined, ... We could be sitting here right now talking about how the meniscus transplant didn't work as well as we liked and it doesn't look like she will play. That was a possibility. And here we're looking at it and - knock on wood - she hasn't had one incident with that since she started being able to do things. That came out way better than we anticipated.
For the first time since 1994, there isn't anybody sitting there saying, 'You know, there's three or four teams that can win the national championship: Connecticut and three other teams.' First time in 12 years. So, how they react to that is going to be interesting. They might like being in that situation.
Any time like you have a really good point guard like they do, you have a chance to have a really good team. Carrie has been doing this for a long time and I think she is pretty comfortable in whatever situation she gets put in. She has a really good group of players that are pretty versatile.
Sometimes the reaction (to losing) is more of you're just stunned and you have no (outward) reaction. So you just sit there and you stare into space, and there's a pretty good chance that that will happen to you again because you have no idea what just happened and you don't know how to deal with it.
Her Achilles' is a little tight. She stretches it; she does whatever she has to do.
Chalk it up to lousy preparation. We can't run a play.
I keep thinking that it's going to work out. I keep holding out hope that it's going to work out.