Ascending to the Summitt

Auriemma reflects as he nears milestone set by his rival, friend

Geno Auriemma is on the verge of history. Again.

The UConn coach’s next win — likely Saturday against Providence at Gampel Pavilion — will be the 1,098th of his Hall of Fame career, matching him with Tennessee legend Pat Summitt for second on the all-time list in women’s basketball. He’s currently seven behind Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, who surpassed Summitt last month.

Recently, when a member of his program reminded Auriemma of this, he sort of shrugged his shoulders.

And then he started thinking in broader terms.

“It did make me think about it,” Auriemma, 66, said Tuesday on Zoom, “about how if you’re around long enough, how the world spins. It spins you in a lot of different directions, but one thing’s for sure. What was old becomes new and what is new becomes old.

“They say that all the time.” More specifically, Auriemma, now in his 36th season at UConn, started thinking about his late nemesis, Summitt, and the extremes by which both were measured as their programs rose to fabled heights. Auriemma’s won a record 11 NCAA titles, one more than famed UCLA men’s coach John Wooden and three more than Summitt, who collected her last championship in

2008.

“Back when Pat, God bless her, was alive and coaching and winning championships, everybody in America would talk about Pat in two ways,” Auriemma said. “One, ‘Man, I admire her so much, she wins so much, she does it the right way. She has the respect of everybody for everything.’ Then you had another part of the population that would go, ‘Man, I want to beat her butt so bad, I want to beat Tennessee so bad. They roll into the Final Four like they own the

Associated Press file photo Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, left, shakes hands with UConn coach Geno Auriemma before a 2006 game in Knoxville, Tenn.