Geno Auriemma
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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
Watching them play kind of brought back memories of when you spring an upset. I don't remember the last time we had a chance to spring an upset on somebody. It's a great feeling for them.
We're in a good bracket with good teams like everybody else is. Say all you want about who's in a tough bracket, who's not? The bottom line is, starting this weekend everybody will get to a chance to prove whether they belong there or not.
We're 18-2 and it doesn't feel that way. I don't feel overly comfortable or ecstatic. I just like where we are right now, but I know that there's a lot in front of us, so I'm not ready to make any defining statements yet. We've played pretty good basketball, but I don't know that we've played an exceptional game at both ends. So I think there's a lot of room for improvement, a lot of room for growth.
No one ever talks about our defense. Our defense has always been good. But when you have great offensive players like I've coached the last 15 years, it's hard to concentrate on our defense. But our defense has been pretty good.
I know everybody has talked about parity the last couple of years, and it hasn't played out at the end of the season. But there does seem to be more even teams than in the past.
I can't tell you how many times I've been offered jobs in that league that no one ever knew about. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people seriously about jobs in that league. This one just happened to make it to that point ... to the newspapers.
She's very, very good under pressure. She doesn't get bothered by anything. That's why she's kind of hard for me to coach because when I talk to her, she don't listen because she's not affected by anything. I knew she was going to make the free throws.
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.
You don't go in thinking how many can we win by and that's not the point of the game. The point of the game is if we do what we're supposed to do, we're going to win. But as you look at the game, you try to find areas where you know down the road are going to help you. The fact that we didn't turn the ball over (is good). We, for long stretches, got the right shot at the right time. We executed some things pretty well.
I don't know which team we're going to see: the team that we've known in the past that plays really well or the one we haven't seen before that's backed into a corner and in danger of not making the Big East tournament.
You can't gang up on the post players because they have so many good shooters on the perimeter.
I?d like to do enough to kind of get her winded, so I would think a couple possessions would probably do it.