The Road Show is Geno’s show

MYSTIC — Geno Auriemma walked into Latitude 41 on the banks of the Mystic River early Tuesday night, relaxed as any summer tourist. No, he’s not playing much golf these days. When you suck at it, he insists, you don’t feel like playing.

With that, the UConn women’s basketball coach started talking. This was the kickoff to the second annual Huskies Coaches Road Show, but the truth is it’s always a good show — road, home or neutral site — with Auriemma.

“We live in a place where it’s fantasyland,” Auriemma said. “It’s like that commercial on TV where they hit soft-serve ice cream and sprinkles. They think everything you touch around here is supposed to turn into a national championship trophy and parade. Welcome to the real world. It doesn’t work like that.”

Chances are you’ve seen the Geico commercial in question. Oil workers hit the mother lode of softserve. And just when they think they’re beyond lucky, they strike a geyser of sprinkles. Yes, Auriemma keeps finding new and imaginative metaphors for the expectations placed on a program with a record 11 national championships.

“It’s the only place I’ve ever seen where No.1, there are more articles written about your walk-ons many times than your starters,” Auriemma said. “And No. 2, ‘How come you didn’t sign the No. 1 player in the country for the 15th year in a row?’

“You keep getting it right like we have in recruiting like we have for so many years, at some point you’re going to have a couple of stumbles. And we have. It seems to be happening all over the country.” Auriemma smiles. The players he landed for 2019, he said, are really, really good. And 2020? Same.

“I like our team,” Auriemma said.

There are two ways of looking at the UConn women. If the only bar is a national championship, they haven’t won one in three years. So the program is in decline. Or if the bar is lowered just an inch or two, they’ve been to 12 straight Final Fours. So everything was fine, is fine and will be fine … because sprinkles.

“Recruiting is never as good as you think it is and it’s never as bad as other people think it is,” Auriemma said. “If any other team in the country had three starters back, people would be talking about them being a national championship contender. For us, it’s, ‘You have three starters and you don’t have anybody coming off the bench.’ We haven’t had anybody coming off the bench the last three years. So I don’t know why that’s a big cause for concern.”

He shrugs. Maybe it’s his age. Maybe it’s the offseason. Maybe the players he landed really are that good. Maybe it is all those reasons he’s so relaxed. And maybe it is because he has come to grips with the changing face of player procurement in college basketball. Yes, Auriemma has had transfers before. Yes, Auriemma has had foreign players before. Yet never has he reloaded in such short order: a graduate transfer (Evelyn Adebayo from Murray State), a transfer (Evina Westbrook from Tennessee) and a European (Ania Makurat of Poland) to go with Nika Muhl of Croatia and, yes, the No. 1 recruit (Paige Bueckers) for 2020.

A Tennessee transfer? Good grief, the late Pat Summitt would have stormed Geno’s office 15 years ago.

“It’s a different world,” Auriemma said. “I never understood the big to-do about us playing Tennessee again. With all the teams we play and who we have played the last X number of years, it just doesn’t seem the same. Yeah, the name is the same but nothing else is the same. It’s almost like they’re any other school now.”

Sorry about that Rocky Top detour. Back to the recruiting road.

“You talk about coaches getting it wrong in recruiting,” Auriemma said. “I wish I had a dollar for every kid that gets it wrong. What is it now, 600, 700, 900 (transfers each year) in the men, I don’t know how many on the women’s side. It’s a weird world we live in, man.”

Over the year, the UConn women have taken considerable pride in recruiting the correct players and winning national titles with them. Sure, there have been misses. And the swings and misses beyond Megan Walker in the 2017 recruiting class with Andra Espinoza-Hunter, Lexi Gordon and Mikayla Coombs is the reason so many changes were made on the run. In the larger sense, the UConn women are like every other men’s and women’s program in the nation now.

“Every single, solitary thing I think you’ve seen on the men’s side has and will continue to filter into the women’s game, even more so with each passing year,” Auriemma said. “Recruiting players is harder than ever because what’s involved in the process. You got a lot of these kids who can’t play, but because they watch the men they think they are as good as they are. They’ll watch Zion Williamson and the Duke kids and they’ll go, ‘I was a first-team women’s All-American in high school, so I’m going to act like that and want to be treated like that.’ It’s like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ But that’s what these kids are being told by everyone around them. Recruiting is impossible anymore.

“The worst part is after you get them to come and play, you’ve got to keep recruiting them at the end of every year. ‘Hey, who are you recruiting this year?’ Well, three guys on my team who are thinking about leaving. It’s the craziest thing, and every coach is dealing with it. I don’t know any coach in America who hasn’t said to me at one point that this is ridiculous. The floodgates have been opened and the NCAA is only going to make it easier for kids to transfer. They’re not going to make it any harder.”

The past three announcements were made within a fortnight —bang, bang, bang — but Auriemma said there had been plenty of work already done. Adebayo is a big player with offensive touch. Playing against older players, Makurat, with multi-dimensional skills, has toughness and smarts beyond her years.

And then there’s Westbrook, an extremely talented guard who can play any of Auriemma’s three perimeter positions. UConn has put in the former appeal waiver for Westbrook to play immediately. There was a coaching change at Tennessee with Kellie Harper replacing Holly Warlick, so Auriemma is optimistic.

“But you never know,” he said.

Westbrook, the No. 2rated player in the nation in

2017 behind Walker, evidently wanted to know why UConn hadn’t pushed harder to get her the first time around. She was dragging out her recruiting, so UConn took their chances on a couple of players that wanted to come. It didn’t work out. And now? Well, now they are fixing it. Evina is Ms. Fix-It.

Westbrook, with two years of eligibility remaining, raised eyebrows after the Lady Vols were eliminated from the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Saying she didn’t know whether Warlick would be back didn’t exactly charge the mountain for the embattled coach.

“I just think off-the-court stuff, steps need to be taken with our staff and just overall off the court with this team,” she said.

Asked if he was bothered by any of this, Auriemma said no.

“It doesn’t,” he said. “Kids say things all the time. Coaches say things all the time. I wasn’t there. I know Holly really well. I don’t presume to know how that all went down. I’m not going to make any decision based on that. She knows the way she handled that probably wasn’t the best way to handle it. We talked about it, and she knows that.”

And with that, hey, maybe he’ll add another player soon. That’s the game now.