STORRS, Conn. — A number of years in the past, UConn ladies’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma returned to his hometown of Montella, Italy, for the primary time in years. He was on trip elsewhere within the nation, however a cousin reached out and invited him to a relative’s wedding ceremony. The ceremony, he found, can be in the identical church the place he attended kindergarten six many years earlier, so he determined to increase his journey an additional few days.
As a baby, Auriemma walked to kindergarten day by day, stopping at a subject the place locals had erected a basketball hoop and created a soccer subject. Years later, Auriemma’s mom, Marsiella, usually instructed how that was the primary time he noticed a basketball hoop.
On his journey six many years later, Auriemma retraced his footsteps from his childhood house to the church. He stopped on the subject to soak up the view. The basketball hoop and soccer subject have been lengthy gone. There are extra homes now — with working water and electrical energy, in contrast to his house as a boy. He’s the oldest residing individual in his quick household, the final one who remembers this place clearly.
“We have been residing in poverty, however we didn’t comprehend it was poverty,” Auriemma stated. “As a child, I believed, ‘Why do I want a phone?’ Nobody had a phone. ‘Why do I want cash?’ No one had cash. ‘Why do I want working water? Why do we’d like electrical energy? Everyone helps everyone else get by.’”
Over time, a number of earthquakes have ripped via this space, however the individuals have at all times rebuilt. Even the tremors couldn’t destroy the idea that the brand new buildings would stand, even when everybody understood that every thing could possibly be gone straight away.
“Clearly, it has modified,” Auriemma, 70, says. “However it’s nonetheless type of the identical.”
Such is true for Montella but additionally for Auriemma.
If there’s a theme to his teaching and a proof for the way he has arrived at this pinnacle, it’s this: He’s a self-described optimist with a worst-case-scenario plan if something and every thing goes south. He has a reminiscence like an elephant, which implies his previous is rarely removed from his thoughts.
That mentality has pushed Auriemma up to now — one win away from turning into the winningest basketball coach of all time.
Geno Auriemma joins Tara VanDerVeer because the all-time winningest collegiate basketball head coach. #NCAAWBB pic.twitter.com/q7FgrcbXi2
— NCAA March Insanity (@MarchMadnessWBB) November 16, 2024
When Auriemma got here to UConn in 1985 as a 31-year-old, he noticed it as a stepping-stone job: Win a bit, develop this system after which transfer on to a extra established program.
Championship basketball wasn’t purported to emanate from UConn; Auriemma may see that. Throughout his interview, then-UConn athletic director John Toner deliberately prevented exhibiting Auriemma the gymnasium or the locker room out of concern that Auriemma would flip down the job. After Auriemma took the job anyway, he shared a single workplace along with his whole workers. He and longtime assistant Chris Dailey every had a desk; the remainder of the workers shared a single sofa and used a espresso desk as a desk. Auriemma’s and Dailey’s teaching contracts stipulated they educate gymnasium courses to non-athletes. Attendance was so poor at UConn video games that they made it a category requirement for college kids.
In 1991, the Huskies made their first Closing 4 alongside established packages Stanford, Virginia and Tennessee. “It was all of the actually, actually good packages, nice gamers, nice coaches and …” Auriemma stated, then paused. “And us. (It was) like, ‘Who’re these individuals?’”
After the Closing 4, one thing modified. Now not was UConn a stepping stone. It was the place Auriemma felt he wanted and wished to be. This system’s first Closing 4 run allowed the Huskies to draw extra high-talent gamers, and when Rebecca Lobo visited campus within the early Nineteen Nineties, Auriemma knew she may assist put this system on the map. The Huskies had gotten to the Closing 4 with gamers no different Closing 4 workforce recruited, so he figured touchdown an All-American may assist them take the subsequent step.
Lobo’s mother and father didn’t need her to go to UConn. There wasn’t a lot infrastructure or group constructed round campus. The lecturers weren’t what they’re now. (Lobo’s mother and father referred to as it a “security faculty” after they visited.)
“He was the promoting level,” Lobo stated. “The explanation to go there was to play for him. That has stayed constant, however particularly within the early years. This was earlier than it was confirmed that he would get you to a Closing 4 or nationwide championship, that he could possibly be the one to usher you into the very best model of your self.”
Rebecca Lobo is one in every of a number of stars Auriemma has developed right into a nationwide champion and All-American. (Bob Stowell / Getty Photographs)
In 1995, Lobo sat in Auriemma’s workplace when a fan delivered baked items to the workforce and fawned over the star All-American. After the fan left, Lobo — who was seated throughout from Auriemma at his desk — rolled her eyes.
“Don’t you ever be that manner,” Lobo remembers Auriemma sternly telling her. “Don’t you ever take any of this without any consideration.”
That was 200 wins in with six NCAA Match appearances and a Closing 4 on the resume. The Huskies have been getting ready to their first nationwide title. However an eye-roll, to Auriemma, signified what may deliver all of it crashing down.
Although Auriemma noticed potential in Storrs, he additionally acknowledged this system’s humble previous may return if he didn’t construct for the long run.
“Once I first began, I believed we’d beat everyone as a result of we’re smarter than them and we’re going to outsmart them, despite the fact that I knew we couldn’t win,” Auriemma stated. “After which once we began profitable on a regular basis, all I stored eager about was, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re going to lose. They’re going to play nice. We’re going to play sh—y.’”
Auriemma continued hammering house his factors with every new roster, and UConn turned the game’s gold normal. Lobo handed the reins to Jennifer Rizzotti, Shea Ralph and Nykesha Gross sales. They handed the baton to Sue Chook and Swin Money. Then Diana Taurasi and Renee Montgomery. Maya Moore, Tina Charles, Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Paige Bueckers — the record goes on.
This system turned a bedrock of sports activities en path to Auriemma matching former Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer as faculty basketball’s winningest coach. By way of all of it, he has been assured that with the proper preparation, UConn may proceed to compete on the highest stage, however he’s additionally satisfied it may all be gone tomorrow.
UConn’s success at all times felt precarious, with failure at all times nipping at his heels.
For Auriemma, the previous — whether or not or not it’s that one dropping season or the way it felt to assist his mother and father acclimate to Norristown, Pa., after leaving the small village in Italy he referred to as house — is at all times there. None of it’s a failure, however it’s all a reminder of how far he has come. It issues to him that he needed to create his personal success, and in the end, he selected to make it at UConn. He by no means seemed for a shortcut, and it’s a reminder {that a} divergence at any level may have created a really completely different life.
Friday will mark 63 years since he arrived in America, which signifies that 63 years in the past Wednesday — on the evening when he may grow to be faculty basketball’s all-time winningest coach with a victory towards Fairleigh Dickinson — he was a 7-year-old boy someplace in the course of the Atlantic, surrounded by water and sky, 11 days right into a 13-day journey.
His mother and father by no means promised him that life can be higher right here, solely that it may be higher as long as they didn’t take shortcuts and relied on the individuals round them. He by no means forgot that every thing could possibly be gone straight away, which has pushed him and formed him essentially the most from win No. 1 to 100 and ultimately 1,217, from turning UConn from a stepping stone right into a program that’s synonymous throughout all sports activities with success.
As he has stated numerous occasions to his gamers and himself: Don’t you ever take any of this without any consideration.
(High picture: C. Morgan Engel / NCAA Images by way of Getty Photographs)
