Still going strong
Auriemma marks 40 years at UConn with ride down memory lane
Geno Auriemma took a drive down memory lane recently with the UConn women’s basketball social media team in tow, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the start to his record-setting run as the Huskies’ coach.
A nearly 4-minute video, posted to UConn X accounts, offered scenes from Auriemma’s retracing of a ride through the Storrs campus and to a Willimantic Dunkin’ that he took in 1984 with thenathletic director John Toner.
“We each ordered a coffee and two old fashioned donuts,” Auriemma said after entering the Dunkin’. “Just like John. No fluff. No sprinkles. No frosting. No cream inside. Plain and to the point. Me, right now, would go for coffee cake muffin for 600 calories.”
Auriemma walked out, back toward his black SUV in the parking lot.
“John asked me if I wanted to be the head coach at Connecticut,” Auriemma said. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘You promise not to screw it up?’ ”
“I said, ‘Well, yeah, I’m not going to screw it up.’ We shook hands and that was the deal. That was that.”
The transaction was soon official.
“They handed me the sheet of paper, sign here,” Auriemma said. “John Toner. Geno Auriemma. And the rest is history.”
That original contract was shown in the video. Auriemma’s starting salary was $28,229. Forty years later he is entering the final year of a contract that pays him more than $3 million a year — and more than 100 times what he made as a first-year, 30year-old head coach.
Auriemma, who turned 70 in March, just before he would coach in the Final Four for a 23rd time, hit another milestone this past season — his 1,200th victory. He is 1,213—162 at UConn, winning 11 national championships. With Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer (1,216-271) having retired, Auriemma is positioned to take over as the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history early next season.
As always, expectations will be sky high for a team that has decimated by injuries, but successful nonetheless, each of the past three seasons. The Huskies will return numerous key players (Paige Bueckers, for instance), expect to welcome others back from injuries (Azzi Fudd) and landed the top recruit in America (Sarah Strong).
UConn will be, perhaps, the deepest teams in the nation and, certainly,
among the few teams expected to contend for a national championship.As always. UConn’s most recent title came in 2016.
It’s been like a fairy tale, Auriemma’s 40 years at UConn. He entered the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2005 and led Team USA to two gold medals along the way. The engine has been running so fast and efficiently for so long, and his program has long been the fascination of the state.
Who could have imagined this in 1984?
No one.
“Where did we take recruits? New Haven,” Auriemma said in the video. “We took them through Yale and told them it was UConn.”
Auriemma had previously been an assistant coach at Virginia. He took the UConn job with a lot of unknowns built into the equation. He had the Huskies in the Final Four by 1991. The first championship and undefeated season came in 1995.
“The dorms were
lousy,” Auriemma said, pointing out different spots on campus in the video. “Our gym was lousy. Our gym was so bad, they didn’t even show it to me . ... John said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ I got in his car and we started driving right down here. It’s amazing. It’s really eerie that it was exactly like this. The sky was the same. The amount of rain we’re getting is exactly the same.”
After over coffee and old fashioned donuts, an agreement was reached. Auriemma’s first move
was the hire Chris Dailey — who was an assistant at her alma mater, Rutgers — as an assistant. She’s been with him for all 40 years at UConn.
“Maybe that’s why they gave me the job, because I said I would hire CD,” Auriemma said in the video. “It was certainly not an easy sell to get her to leave home to come to a place like UConn. If you told people to come from down there to up here, really, it would be like recreating the Lewis and Clark Expedition. You didn’t know if they were coming back.
You were going to uncharted territory.”
Auriemma’s first contract was for five years and an average annual salary of about $30,000. Now he’s as rich and famous as — and more successful than — any coach in America. He likes to joke that he and his wife, Kathy, used empty Pampers boxes as a cocktail table in their apartment. Today they live in Manchester and own a restaurant.
“It’s a change, but one thing that hasn’t changed is I made a commitment
to this place a long time ago,” Auriemma said in May 2021, upon signing his most recent contract. Athletic director David Benedict said in March that talks had begun toward another. “People have always asked me, first it was, ‘Are you going to go coach somewhere else?’ Then it became, ‘How much longer are you going to coach?’ And there was never any discussion back and forth about anything other than, ‘I know I’m well taken care of and this is where I want to be.’”