Auriemma becomes third 1,200-win hoops coach
Geno Auriemma has entered elite company, earning his 1,200th win when his UConn Huskies beat Seton Hall 67-34 in a Big East women’s basketball matchup in Hartford, Connecticut.
The victory Wednesday makes Auriemma, 69, the third coach in the history of NCAA college basketball – men’s or women’s – to reach 1,200 wins and comes exactly one month to the day that another legend, Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer, reached the milestone. Two weeks later, VanDerveer would earn win 1,203 to break former Duke and Army men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski’s all-time record.
Now, in his 39th season, Auriemma, a 2006 inductee to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, stands alongside the two titans, though his bona fides have long been established after coaching a long list of All-Americans and leading UConn to a record 11 NCAA women’s basketball national championships.
“I’m sure if you asked coach when he started and you said, ‘Forty years later you’ll have 11 national championships, 1,200 wins,’ he wouldn’t believe it,” Diana Taurasi, a three-time All-American and three-time national champion at Connecticut, told CT Insider.
“What he’s doing is unheard of and will never happen again,” the five-time Olympic gold medalist continued. “I mean, you’ll never find someone that will stay at one place that long.
“It doesn’t happen anymore and it will never be done again.”
After hitting the milestone, Auriemma reflected on Connecticut’s journey to becoming a women’s college basketball powerhouse and said he was “proud” of what the program has become.
“We helped make something happen that never existed and no one ever thought it could happen,” Auriemma said.