Victorious vice
Why winning means more now to Auriemma
HARTFORD — Only three college basketball coaches have ever won 1,200 or more games.
And only UConn women’s basketball’s Geno Auriemma has won all 1,200plus games at one program.
By no means has it been easy, especially over the course of the last three injury-`riddled seasons.
With the Huskies’ win over Creighton on Monday, Auriemma solidified his spot as college basketball’s second-winningest coach. The Hall of Famer surpassed Mike Krzyzewski’s 1,202 wins as he earned victory No. 1,203. Auriemma remains six wins behind the all-time leader, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer.
Auriemma has a different appreciation for wins now than he did eight years ago during UConn’s last national championship run and even more different now what he had 39 years ago when he first took over the program.
“What we’ve gone through the last couple of years, you appreciate it way more, way more, and you appreciate your players more,” Auriemma said Monday. “The passion and the wanting to win and the energy that goes into it, the feeling like this before every game, it’s the same as it was in the 80s. But I just think it means a little more now.”
Injuries have plagued UConn the past three seasons. From heartbreaking and gruesome mid-game injuries to disappointing preseason injuries robbing a player of the year to come. Very few have escaped unscathed.
This year UConn has a program record five players out with season-ending injuries — the most it’s ever had in a single-season. Paige Bueckers basically missed two years after back-to-back knee injuries and star shooter Azzi Fudd has yet to play a full season in her three years in Storrs.
Despite all the adversity and uncertainty caused by the injuries, the Huskies haven’t totally collapsed. In 2022, they made it the national championship game following knee injuries to both Bueckers and Fudd and Dorka Juhász’s Elite-Eight wrist injury. They’ve swept the Big East regular season and tournament titles the last two seasons and are on their way to doing so again this year. Not once has the team dropped out of the top-20 in the AP Poll.
“We celebrate wins more now than we used to,” Auriemma said. “Maybe if we had all 14 of our players, maybe we would just be like we’ve always been here at UConn.”
Monday’s win over the Bluejays gave the Huskies their 30th all-time conference regular season crown. Auriemma and UConn still own the NCAA record for most consecutive trips to the Final Four (14) and are tied with UCLA men’s basket
ball for the most national titles (11).
But it wasn’t always like that.
UConn went 43-39 in Auriemma’s first three seasons. He admits that he dwelled more on wins and losses back then than he does now.
“To be honest with you, earlier in my career, as things were happening that were very significant, they impacted me a lot more,” he said. “It’s strange to say that but maybe the volume of things that have happened, I just kind of take it — I don’t want to say take it for granted because that’s a bad word — in stride.”
He doesn’t allow himself to fixate on the 1,200 wins or on all the wins that could have been. He’s learned to stay in the moment each game and practice.
“You’re constantly being reminded every game of how many things your team is not good at,” he said. “So, in that moment or in the moments at practice
you really aren’t thinking, ‘Yeah, you know, we have over 1,000 wins. We have 1,200 wins.’ And it never enters your mind because you’re just so fixated on the things you have to fix, the things you have to correct.
“I’m sure there’ll be a time, this summer or next summer or whatever it is, when you think back, and it’ll really have a huge impact on you. But I really try not to dwell on it mostly.”
Auriemma knows he won’t be coaching long enough to reach another 1,200 wins. The final number won’t matter. Because for him and his staff, it’s about the journey that led them here.
“I’m probably like a lot of our fans. We made it look so easy. It was never easy. But we made it look so easy for so long that you almost forget,” Auriemma said. “For me now, it’s like going back to the 80s and 90s, where you would have to play great, and you knew that every game that you won was special. I’ve always said the only thing worse than losing is winning all the time.”6