UConn has another reason to celebrate
Auriemma and Dailey win 1,000th career game together before sellout crowd at Mohegan Sun
Mohegan — When Geno Auriemma was first hired to coach the UConn women's basketball team beginning with the 1985-86 season, he thought it was going to be easy. Really easy.
"There's no way I could fail," Auriemma said. "It wasn't until the middle of January, maybe February that it started to dawn on me, 'Man, you're not as good as you thought you were.
"I'm pretty good at what I do, but that doesn't matter unless you get players that are really, really, really good . ... I was under the impression I could do anything. I didn't know any better."
On Tuesday night at Mohegan Sun Arena, Auriemma became the fourth coach in women's basketball history — North Carolina's Sylvia Hatchell reached the milestone earlier in the day — to reach the 1,000-win plateau.
Top-ranked UConn defeated Oklahoma 88-64 before a sellout crowd of 9,151 to see the Hall of Fame Holiday Showcase and to witness history.
The postgame celebration for Auriemma and associate coach Chris Dailey, who has been with him for the duration of his Hall of Fame career at UConn, stretched on, as the
members of Auriemma's first team marched on to the floor and he was presented by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame with a commemorative jacket and a statue depicting the game's founder, James Naismith.
First Dailey, then Auriemma took the microphone to speak to the fans in the arena. Both choked back their emotions.
"We gave everything we had to this," Auriemma said. "We try not to leave anything on the table . ... We have gotten back far more than we deserve."
Auriemma, who was showered with confetti, later joked that the festivities were "a little over the top," and, asked about spending his entire career with Dailey, he likened the tandem to that of explorers Lewis and Clark.
"I don't think anything this memorable can be accomplished by one person," Auriemma said, listing several famous duos. "There's no way we would be having this conversation right now if I hired someone different."
Auriemma, who has a brother-sister relationship with Dailey that includes plenty of sarcasm, then said of his appreciation for Dailey: "Anybody who knows me, knows that. Anybody that doesn't know me, she tells them."
Auriemma said that at the beginning of his career, when he was coaching high school basketball, his goal was to have a $20 bill in his pocket instead of a $10. A thousand wins was never on his radar.
"You know, the first 12 were the hardest wins of all 1,000 of them," Auriemma said of seeing the players from his first UConn team on the court after the win. "It's a great memory I have of that group. They were so happy. I've never seen a bunch of kids happier to get 12 wins. They carried it around with them; they're still here."
UConn (9-0) was led Tuesday by 21 points and nine rebounds from Napheesa Collier and 20 points and eight rebounds from Azura Stevens. Katie Lou Samuelson had 19 points, including four 3-point field goals, and six assists. Kia Nurse finished with 17 points.
The Huskies played a less than memorable third quarter — until the closing seconds — allowing Oklahoma to pull within 51-44 on a jump shot by Shaina Pellington with 4:49 to play in the period, prompting a timeout by Auriemma. To that point in the quarter, the Huskies had scored only three points.
They came out of the timeout with what seemed like a greater sense of urgency. Stevens scored inside, assisted by Collier, and Collier connected on a 3-point field goal from the right side of the floor, directly in front of the Huskies' bench to push the lead back to 12.
UConn scored twice in the final six seconds of the third on a layup by Collier and steal and layup by Samuelson to make it 64-47 entering the fourth quarter and allowing the celebration to get started a little bit early.
Auriemma, whose UConn teams have won 11 national championships, joins the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee, Stanford's Tara VanDerveer and Hatchell in the 1,000-win club. He is the fastest to reach the milestone, accomplishing it in his 1,135th game. Auriemma is 500-36 since picking up win No. 500 and is 100 for his last 101.
"It's amazing to see all the tradition and the history and to live that out every day," UConn's Stevens said of the occasion. "It's cool to see the first team come back and to see coach and CD after the game and how happy they were."
"Obviously, he has set the bar at a crazy high level," Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale said. "It's both the way his teams play and the way they conduct themselves. It's total class and the momentum that he has been able to capture and ride through a couple of decades is almost incomprehensible." v.fulkerson@theday.com