The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
War of the words
Auriemma, McGraw go way back — and forth
You’ll rarely hear about a lasting conflict between a great coach and a bad coach. Animosity extends only as far as rivalries worth paying attention to and, really, the conversation can only be as compelling as the basketball.
Geno Auriemma and Muffet McGraw are both great coaches.
If they were not, and if they didn’t share a unique place in the sport, neither would care much about what the other says or does. But UConn and Notre
Dame have crossed paths enough over the years — on the courts of the Big East and the Final Four, on the recruiting trail — that one coach seems to occasionally open their mouth and try to trip up the other.
The latest back-and-forth unfolded in recent weeks, with McGraw using part of her appearance on the “Off The Looking Glass” podcast to describe what she perceives as a UConn/ ESPN bias and share some other thoughts about UConn that Auriemma didn’t take kindly to.
Auriemma responded Monday on the UConn women’s basketball coach’s show.
“I guess Muffet’s bored,” he said. “I guess she don’t have a whole lot to talk about. And usually when she was coaching, when she did talk, nobody listened anyway. So I guess she figures she’s got her platform now. … We’ve been on ESPN a lot. There are a lot of other schools within proximity to ESPN. I don’t think the bias has anything to do with where ESPN is located or where UConn is located. I think the bias has something to do, if there is any, with the 11 national championships, which is a lot more than two, last I checked. At least, I remembered that on ‘Sesame Street.’ Eleven is a lot more than two.”
Some noted Auriemma’s comments and likened them to him dunking on McGraw.
Some viewed it as unnecessarily harsh and misguided.
Either way, people paid attention because that’s what people do when two great coaches butt heads.
Here is a look back at some
highlights of the UConn/Notre Dame series, the accomplishments of Auriemma and McGraw, and their rivalry.
PACE SETTERS
Through 36 seasons, Auriemma’s record is 1,125-147, just behind Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer (1,134) and just ahead of former Tennessee coach Pat Summitt (1,098) for the most victories in history. He has won a record 11 national championships, been to the Final Four 21 times and is an eight-time Naismith Coach of the Year. McGraw retired after the 2019-20 season with a record of 936-292. She won two national championships, made the Final Four nine times and is a four-time Naismith winner.
SAME PENNSYLVANIA COACHING TREE
Auriemma’s family came from Italy to America in the early 1960s and he was raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania — just outside Philadelphia and about 75 miles southeast of McGraw’s hometown of Pottsville. Geno attended West Chester University and got into coaching as an assistant in 1978-79 at St. Joseph under Jim Foster, who would also give McGraw her first college job. McGraw was a player at St. Joseph’s in 1974-77 and an assistant under Foster from 1980-82.
CLIMBING COACHING LADDER
Auriemma was a high school assistant in 1979-81 and an assistant at Virginia in 198185. He was hired at UConn in 1985. McGraw was named coach at Lehigh in 1982 and was 88-41 there in five seasons. McGraw was hired at Notre Dame in 1987.
SLOW START TO RIVALRY
UConn-Notre Dame first played each other in 1995-96, Notre Dame’s first season in the Big East. The Huskies, who had won their first national title a season earlier, won all three meetings — 87-64 in South Bend, 86-79 in Storrs and 71-54 in the Big East Tournament (Storrs). UConn wound up winning the first 11 games of the series.
IRISH BREAKTHROUGH
Notre Dame’s first victory in the series came Jan. 15, 2001, 92-76 in South Bend — the first of three games in a season that made up a fascinating chapter in this rivalry. Sue Bird famously beat the buzzer with a pull-up jumper to win the Big East championship and the teams met again in a national semifinal at the Final Four in St. Louis.
THAT NIGHT IN ST. LOUIS
UConn built a 16-point lead in the first half but the Irish rolled to a 90-75 victory behind Ruth Riley, who scored 16 of her 18 points after halftime. Diana Taurasi, a freshman, shot 1 for 15 and fouled out.
“Everybody thinks it was on D because she played her worst game,” Auriemma said in November. “But there were so many bad decisions and so many things that I did that game. The only person that screwed that game up more than her was me, for sure.”
U-TURN
UConn was 28-4 against Notre Dame, including a recent Big East Tournament victory, when the teams met at the 2011 Final Four in Indianapolis. The Irish won 72-63 and afterward, according to multiple reports, Irish senior Becca Bruszewski opened the door to the UConn locker room and yelled, “It must suck to be you.” That victory was the beginning a run of seven Notre Dame victories in eight games in the series. In that 2011-13 span, the UConnTennessee rivalry dissolved, supplanted as the best in the sport by UConn-Notre Dame.
UCONN RESPONSE
Notre Dame defeated UConn three times during the 2012-13 season but Geno Auriemma said, “We’re not going to lose the next one.”
Told that Notre Dame’s Skylar Diggins had spoken of a “distaste” for UConn, Auriemma said, “If I was her, I would feel the same way. We have seven national championships; they have one.”
The Huskies defeated the Irish 83-65 at the Final Four in New Orleans and, two days later, defeated Louisville for their eighth national title.
NOT NICE TO FIB
Notre Dame moved to the ACC and they did not meet in the 2013-14 regular season. McGraw claimed that UConn was ducking the Irish.
“It’s not nice for Muffet to fib during Lent,” Auriemma responded.
McGraw’s response in a statement issued by Notre Dame, was “The recent published reports that Notre Dame is not interested in playing Connecticut in the near future are completely false, extremely disappointing and, frankly, baffling.”
NO RELATIONSHIP
The next meeting was the 2014 NCAA championship in Nashville. Both teams were undefeated. Before the game, McGraw said, “We don’t have a relationship. I think that (civility) got lost. When we were in the same conference, I think there was a modicum of it, but I think after beating them and not feeling any respect from that, we lost something.”
ALL CONNECTICUT, ALL THE TIME
Auriemma responded to McGraw’s comments the same day, saying, “We think we’re the best basketball program in America, but we don’t flaunt it, we don’t go around talking about it all the time. … But a funny thing happens once they start beating us. Everything changes. It’s just the world we live in. I think when you play as often as we have in a short period of time, I think a lot of things happen that wouldn’t happen if you didn’t play that often. Nobody knows what it’s like being us. … It’s all Connecticut all the time. People are sick of it. It’s just natural. We live with it 365 days a year.”
RIVALRIES ARE INTENSE
Also at the 2014 Final Four, Auriemma said, “I could sit here and list 10,000 coaches that don’t interact with each other whose rivalries are intense. … We’re supposed to play each other, try to beat each other’s brains in, try to win a national championship and compete like hell, Muffet and Geno, and then we’re supposed to get together afterwards and go have a bottle of wine. That’s just not going to happen. So stop asking us why it doesn’t happen.”
TITLE NO. 7
The Huskies won that 2014 championship game matchup, 79-58. After the game, McGraw shared what she had said to Auriemma on the court.
“I said something like, ‘I thought we were playing the Miami Heat for a while; you guys are just that good,’ ” McGraw said . “LeBron was the only thing they were missing.”
THE STREAKS
UConn wound up winning four national titles in a row in 2013-16 to reach 11 and began a record 111-game winning streak in 2014 that ended with a buzzer-beating overtime loss to Mississippi State at the 2017 Final Four in Dallas. Notre Dame, which had also lost the 2015 national championship game to UConn, was the Huskies’ opponent in a national semifinal game at the 2018 Final Four in Tampa. UConn had won seven in a row in the series.
ANOTHER BUZZER
Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale handed the Huskies another overtime loss at the buzzer in a national semifinal. The Irish went on to win their second national championship two days later with a victory over Mississippi State — on another Ogunbowale buzzer-beater. Auriemma had been long familiar with Ogunbowale.
THE TWEETS
In July 2014, Ogunbowale, then a standout high school player in Milwaukee, tweeted the five schools she was still considering: Louisville, Notre Dame, Ohio State, UCLA, Wisconsin. Auriemma then tweeted, “Stay tuned for my list of the 5 players I saw the past 7 days that I have zero interest in recruiting .... #whatajoke.”
THE TECH
During a December 2018 regular-season game in South Bend, eight months after their most recent Final Four meeting, Ogunbowale was issued a technical foul for essentially clotheslining UConn’s Crystal Dangerfield with 4:25 left in UConn’s victory in South Bend, and was issued an unsportsmanlike foul after an exchange of words with Auriemma. Ogunbowale later shunned Auriemma in the handshake line when he attempted to speak to her. Two days later came ...
THE APOLOGY
McGraw put out a statement apologizing to Notre Dame fans and alumni — not UConn or Auriemma — for her team’s lack of poise against UConn. Ogunbowale apologized, too — to “my Irish family.”
“We set a high bar for what we expect from these young women and we did not meet those expectations,” McGraw wrote. “As an educator, it is my job to use this as a teachable moment and help them see that it’s not always about whether you win or lose but it IS ALWAYS about how you play the game. We will continue to strive to be a team that you can be proud of.”
ANOTHER FINAL FOUR
UConn and Notre Dame’s next meeting was at the Final Four in Tampa, a Notre Dame victory. In an earlier interview with Think Progress, McGraw said she would never hire a male as an assistant coach.
Auriemma, in his own news conference, said, “I hope she sends a thank you to all those guys that used to be on her staff that got her all those good players that won a championship,” he said. “I’ve never hired a guy as one of my assistants, either. I’m not going to make a statement about it.”
‘SUCH A BIAS’
McGraw, during her December appearance on the “Off The Looking Glass” pod, was asked whether there was a bias toward UConn.
“I think it goes over the top with ESPN,” she said. “That is Connecticut’s network. Notre Dame has NBC. Connecticut has ESPN. And that is absolutely complete bias there.”
Auriemma said on the coach’s show, “I’m just glad we don’t go 30 years between winning championships, so maybe NBC ought to help them a little more.”