How UConn managed during Auriemma’s absence
The UConn women’s basketball team had already boarded the bus on Tuesday when they noticed a familiar face walking toward them.
After spending the last week away from the program to focus on his health, Husky head coach Geno Auriemma rejoined his players and staff by walking onto their bus and traveling with them to New York.
“It was great,” graduate forward Dorka Juhász said. “We just saw him like walking and was like, ‘Oh, Coach!’ Like he’s back. It was just such a good moment. Obviously, we really missed him.”
Auriemma announced on Jan. 5 that he would take time away from the program to focus on his own health and well-being after missing two straight games last week due to not feeling well.
The Hall of Fame coach missed two games also in December with flu-like symptoms following the death of his mother Marsiella on Dec. 8. The process of grieving his mother coincided with the stress he’s likely under from coaching UConn through its second straight season plagued by injuries.
On Wednesday, he returned to the sideline and coached the Huskies to a dominant 82-52 win over St. John’s at UBS Arena.
“It’s good to see him like smiling, laughing,” Juhász said after the game. “I think it was a good little rest for him. I hope you know he rested enough, and he feels great. But I mean for us is just, we’re just happy to have him back.”
While Auriemma was present the whole game on the sideline, associate head coach Chris Dailey conducted in-game and postgame media interviews. After giving an opening statement
to the media following the game she joked, “This is probably my swan song for the media room.”
Dailey took over coaching the Huskies in Auriemma’s absence for four games this season, including all of last week. She upheld the program’s standard, winning each game by an average of 25.5 points, while also managing its most recent string of injuries. UConn’s game against DePaul, scheduled for Jan. 8, was postponed due to UConn not having enough healthy players.
When she was asked how it felt to have Auriemma back on Wednesday, she said it felt like he was gone for a month even though it had only been about seven days.
“They (the players) were just happy to see him knowing that he was feeling well and well enough to be there,” Dailey said. “They’ve handled it really well. But I think they’re really happy that he’s back. They’re happy that my whistle is no longer with me. I don’t have to have it at practice and I’m happy about that too.”
Dailey said she wasn’t sure when Auriemma would initially return to the team. She conducted the team’s media availability Tuesday morning and thought he would come to practice, but he didn’t. He later showed up as the team was leaving on the bus for New York and said he was going too. Dailey said the team all went out to dinner in the city Tuesday night to welcome Auriemma back.
“I just wanted to make sure that he was in a good place and that he should come back and that he was ready to come back,” Dailey said. “He assured me, and everyone else said, he was. So, it wasn’t a total surprise, but it was like, ‘OK.’ ”
The transition between coaches was nearly seamless as Dailey has been a part of UConn’s staff for as long as Auriemma — all 38 seasons. The duo came to Storrs together in 1985 and Dailey was promoted from the role of primary assistant coach to associate head coach three years later. She owns a 17-0 record when stepping in for Auriemma.
“We don’t see that much of a difference,” Lou Lopez Sénéchal said on Tuesday. “I think they’ve worked together for so many years that she knows what she’s doing, and she knows how to coach us, and it shows. She’s undefeated whenever she coaches.”
The New Jersey native and former Rutgers star player was one of the first assistant coaches to be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
Outside of helping coach, Dailey’s normal role with the Huskies includes creating the scouting reports, recruiting and, per the player’s own words, being the “mom” like presence on the team.
“She kind of has that role of a mom and it’s been nice to interact with her,” Lopez Sénéchal, a graduate transfer from Fairfield, said on Tuesday. “She’s also pretty honest, you know, she doesn’t go different ways to tell you something. You can tell that she’s been here for a long time, and it just made me want to be a part of this (UConn) more just because of the experience of the coaching staff here.”
But despite their history of coaching together Dailey and Auriemma are two different people. Auriemma coaches with a short rotation, often only using one or two subs only once a game is already won. Dailey, on the other hand, will empty her bench usually 15 minutes into the game.
Lopez Sénéchal says Dailey is a little more lighthearted during practices and when she’s acting head coach in game huddles. Dailey likes to have fun with the players. She’ll have them guess attendance numbers before games and purposefully hide errors in the team’s scouting reports for them to find.
Dailey said last week she accidentally left a 2022 date in the team’s scouting report during its Midwest road trip. Azzi Fudd was the only player to find the error.
The players appreciate her always being understanding toward what they’re going through, yet they also know when it’s time to listen when Dailey is serious.
“When I do get on them, I think they respond to that because it’s not just a constant,” Dailey said Tuesday. “So, I think they’ve been responsive to everything. I think Jamelle (Elliott) and Morgan (Valley) have been really positive as well. You know, I think you can only be yourself. And so how that works (is) we can’t be Coach (Auriemma) and when he comes back, whenever that is, he’ll be able to be himself and our players will respond to that.”
Auriemma left the team’s road trip last week early to return to Connecticut alone. He didn’t attend practice once the team was back and gave Dailey and the program space so he could focus on feeling better.
“He’s more of a texter. So, you know when he’s bored when you get a text that says, ‘Hey.’ You don’t really know what’s coming next,” Dailey said Tuesday. “He’s been really good about allowing us to do what we need to do, but we’ve talked to him, and he’ll ask how practice goes and things like that.”
With Auriemma returning to the sideline and Fudd also returning (after spending the last five-plus weeks recovering from a knee injury), the UConn women’s basketball team is nearly whole once again.
While the Huskies are still without two players due to concussions (Ayanna Patterson and Caroline Ducharme), they hope the worst is behind them and now they can focus on doing the work now in preparation for March.