The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Moseley off to a winning start
Former UConn assistant applying what she learned from Auriemma
Marisa Moseley was back home, wielding more responsibility and more power than ever before after accepting a headcoaching job at her alma mater, Boston University. She had checked off some of the most pressing items on her to-do list, including earning her first victory, yet she didn’t sound satisfied.
“I was excited for the players more than anything,” Moseley said last month by phone. “Obviously, winning builds confidence. The hard work they’re putting in, there’s a payoff there. I told them, we can enjoy it for tonight, but we have to get back to work and start preparing for the next game. You don’t want to them to get too high off wins or too low off losses. It’s just constantly trying to improve.”
You see, Moseley did an inordinate amount of winning in her last job, to the point where it’s practically woven into her DNA. In nine seasons as an assistant at UConn, Moseley was a part of nine Final Fours and five national championships, including four consecutive from 2013-16.
But now, Moseley is cradling her own program, one that went 10-19 a season ago with three losses to Lafayette. No longer is she immersed in one of the glitz-and-glamour programs of women’s college basketball.
“There’s an adjustment, but also there’s the reality that they aren’t the same place,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here if they had won every single game coming in. You know that. The challenge more than anything is to try to get the most out of the people that we have and be prepared to try and compete in every game. If we don’t, then we have to go back and fix whatever wasn’t working.
“The expectation around the program at UConn was that you would win every game. I don’t know that people always realized how much went into the pressure of that for the players, for the coaches, for everyone around, where losing was just not an option.”
Replicating anything Geno Auriemma has accomplished is borderline impossible — not just for
Moseley, but for 99 percent of the coaches in America. After experiencing 331 wins and only 14 losses at UConn, Moseley is off to a 4-3 start at BU (not including Wednesday’s game at UMass). She’s tried to implement many of the same principles she learned under her mentor while keeping her expectations reasonable.
“There’s only one him,” Moseley said of Auriemma. “So, you can’t do everything exactly how he does it. I obviously don’t have the players that he has, so I’ve tried to take pieces of what he did offensively. … But it wouldn’t be fair to carboncopy it. At the same time, from a culture standpoint, I’m trying to bring that to the table.”
Moseley has won at BU before; she was a shotblocking specialist on the Terriers’ first and only NCAA Tournament team in 2003. Her first victory — 72-51 over Brown on Nov. 12 — as a coach was met with an applause by Auriemma.
“I don’t know how many games I’ve coached in, but you always remember your first game,” Auriemma said. “You always remember who played and how they played and who the officials were and how many technical fouls you got. It’s special. You might never get another one, but at least you got one.
“I’m thrilled for her because I know it’s not easy going from being the assistant coach to the head coach. I’m really, really happy for her.”
Moseley said she never actively looked for other jobs during her time at UConn, that is until the BU job opened up. Last March, it was announced that Katy Stedling, who had gone 31-88 during four seasons with the Terriers, would not return. Moseley, who had worked alongside two mainstays on Auriemma’s staff, Chris Dailey and Shea Ralph, didn’t hide her interest in the job.
“It was a unique opportunity,” Moseley said. “I was in a great situation at UConn, and when this job did open, it was like, ‘OK.’ It’s not something where I’ve been searching to leave for a good amount of time.”
While Auriemma valued Moseley’s presence on the bench, he encouraged her to pursue the job. Was it the perfect job at the perfect time?
“I don’t know if there ever is a good time or a bad time,” he said. “I think if it wasn’t her alma mater maybe or if wasn’t a place she felt she would love to live, maybe it wouldn’t have been the right time. But everything just seemed to be the right time. It’s like having kids. When’s the right time? I don’t know, when you have one, whenever that is. It just happens. You never know, you never know.”
Now, like any other firstyear coach, Moseley finds herself in a whirlwind of responsibilities. Every now and again she’ll bounce ideas off Auriemma while reminding herself that she’s trying to carve her own path.
“You try to prepare as much as possible, but there’s still so many unknowns or new things to deal with,” she said. “One of the best things about being a coach is every day is different. That’s also one of the hardest things. I think (Auriemma) was really encouraging but was also like, ‘You have to be patient.’ Obviously, where he is now is not where he started.”