Geno saw team turn corner in Cincinnati
Mohegan — The hour was growing late after Monday night's UConn celebration following its seventh straight (and final) American Athletic Conference tournament championship. The confetti. And now the postgame press conference.
The room was fairly quiet. UConn coach Geno Auriemma was holding court on his usual variety of topics.
He said the Huskies (29-3) played exceedingly well over the last sixgame stretch, since a 105-58 win at Cincinnati on Feb. 26. A little while later, a questioner asked him why they've been better. They've been passing the ball better, he said. Former assistant coach Jamelle Elliott was back in the fold.
Then, whoa. A previously untold story of a team which was now more serious, more focused. And it was a good one. "I don't know. Sometimes you just need something to happen," Auriemma said. "I will say that right before our Cincinnati game at Cincinnati, right before the game, the day before that game was a really, turns out it was kind of a pivotal day for us.
"When we left practice that day, things were not very good. Things were not where I wanted them to be. We did not go to Cincinnati in the right frame of mind, as far as I was concerned, and I would not have been surprised one iota if we had lost the game at Cincinnati."
Auriemma would later say his players were scared of him that day — "I'm not necessarily a scary guy, but they were scared," he said. He denies it was anything he said. He denies, with a laugh, having thrown anything.
Auriemma professes to be older and wiser now and not prone to hys
terics. He does admit it was an emotionally draining week. He spoke at a memorial service in Los Angeles for late former NBA great Kobe Bryant and Bryant's daughter Gianna on Monday, Feb. 24. The following day was the day he would call the turning point of UConn's season.
The game in Cincinnati was Wednesday.
"Maybe the fact they were scared," Auriemma said. "'It better happen right now or it's not going to happen.' ... I think the players finally started to understand I'm serious. There's no playing games. 'We're getting toward the end here and this is how we're going to do it.' We went out there and, frankly, I was just shocked at how well we played and how well we shot the ball. It just opened a lot of peoples' eyes on our team."
Auriemma said that he doesn't believe he was explaining himself well enough before that.
"I don't think I was passing that test this winter 'cause we were not in the same ballpark, on the same page, not even close," Auriemma, the Hall of Fame coach now in his 35th season, said. "And that day it all came to a head. Since that day there's been a huge difference on our team."
There must be something to his theory.
On Feb. 16, UConn won 66-53 against UCF. Since then, the Huskies are averaging 89.5 points per game. The ball's not touching the floor much, just being slingshotted from player to player around the perimeter.
The top-seeded Huskies, leaving the league after this year to head back to the Big East, scored 48 points in the paint in Monday's 87-53 victory over No. 3 Cincinnati for the AAC tournament title, a lot of layups.
And suddenly Auriemma is talking about the NCAA tournament again, where his team has been to an unprecedented 12 straight Final Fours. The brackets will be announced March 16 on Selection Monday.
Is it a different UConn team than the one that lost regular-season games this year to No. 1 South Carolina (70-52), No. 2 Oregon (74-56) and No. 3 Baylor (74-58).
"It's my job. I've got to get them ready," Auriemma said of the fifthranked Huskies upcoming trip to the NCAA tournament. "This is a huge challenge for us. It's huge. We had our chance in the regular season and we didn't do it. This is the second season. Now everybody starts 0-0 and we'll see where it ends.”