For Geno Auriemma, breaking wins record is a testament to the people around him

Over 40 seasons Geno and CD have reached heights that weren’t in their wildest dreams when they started their coaching partnership together in the summer of 1985. That summer, a 31-year-old Auriemma left his post as assistant coach under Debbie Ryan at Virginia to move to the sleepy farm town of Storrs, Conn., to take over a fledgling Huskies program in just its 12th season of existence. His first decision as head coach? Hire Rutgers alum Chris Dailey, who was three years removed from an AIAW championship as a player, to be on his coaching staff.

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Following the history-clinching victory on Wednesday against Farleigh Dickinson, Auriemma spoke candidly about his decision to hire Dailey 40 years ago, and how the success he’s had at UConn over four decades wouldn’t have happened without her.

“If she hadn’t said yes when I asked her [to be my assistant] 40 years ago, it’s safe to say that it wouldn’t [have happened]. … [there’s] too much involved, it’s too big. There [were] too many things to do that I could never have been able to do,” Auriemma told reporters.

In many ways CD is Geno’s foil. Geno is known for his fiery personality and his signature sarcasm. Over the years he’s sparred with some of the game’s most iconic coaches including Muffet McGraw and the late Pat Summitt. CD, on the other hand, tends to shy away from spotlight and attention. She moves in the background, ensuring that the program is run efficiently, with a pristine attention to detail. Montages have been created with clips of CD pulling Geno away from a referee to avoid a technical foul.

Yet, because of and in spite of their different strengths, Geno and CD did together something they couldn’t have done alone — lead a basketball program to 31 Sweet Sixteens, 28 Elite Eights and 23 Final Fours. Together they’ve amassed 59 conference championships (30 regular season, 29 tournament) and 11 NCAA national championships.

While fans, the media and historians may fixate on their most recent bit of history — win No. 1,217 — for Geno and CD, one number is more important than all the rest — 160. That’s the number of players they’ve coached in their 40 years together, student athletes whose lives they’ve shaped and who have given their blood, sweat and tears to the program. Players who have embodied the program’s mantra: “Play Hard. Play Smart. Have Fun.”

“Coach used to always say to me, ‘My players come back,'” former Husky and current Dayton head coach Tamika Williams-Jeter told The Next. “And when I was a 16, 17, I kind of got it, but I didn’t really until I had players come back and [was able to] understand how much that means, that it’s not just the wins and losses. And this is somebody who’s won more than anyone. It really is about the relationships you build and the memories you leave. … But, [you’re] talking about the most winningest guy and you’ll always see — from walk-ons to Sue Bird and everything in between — they come back. They come back.”

Indeed, 63 alumni made the trip to Storrs, Conn., on a Wednesday in November to share in the milestone alongside their coaches. Alumni ranging from WNBA and Olympic legends like Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore to role players like Batouly Camara, Stacy Hansmeyer and Tahira Williams were at the game.

“Everybody is here in this building because in some way, shape or form you have impacted their lives,” Bird said to the Gampel Pavilion crowd after the game. “All these players are here because you saw something. … Coach, what you said the other night after your win was perfect — UConn took a chance on you, players took a chance on you and what ultimately happened was all of this.”

Later, 4-time WNBA champion Maya Moore addressed the crowd.

“This is a family. That’s the first thing I think anyone [thinks of] that is around our team long enough — around Coach, around CD — is the word family, and you can’t make up family,” Moore said. “Family is fought for. Family is forged. Family happens, like Sue said, just every day trying to get better. And I’m so grateful to be a part of this Husky family.

“One of the things that separates, I think, Coach and CD [is] their faithfulness to come and be fully present, sometimes too present, and just giving us all that we have. It is incredible to come here.”

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An unbreakable record?

When it was Rebecca Lobo‘s turn to take the mic and address the fans in Gampel, the 1995 Naismith College Player of the Year made a bold proclamation:

“This is something that has never been done before and will never be done by another program or coaching staff,” Lobo said.

While no one knows for sure what the future may hold, Lobo does make a compelling argument. There are just four other active coaches among the top 25 winningest coaches of all time and they are in or approaching the end of their careers — Doug Bruno (38th season, 786 wins), Bill Fennelly (36th season, 777 wins), Joe McKeown (38th season, 768 wins), Kim Mulkey (24 seasons, 723 wins) and Stephanie Gaitley (37th season, 698 wins). Incidentally, Auriemma’s win on Wednesday was over Gaitley’s FDU team, a program she took over last season.

According to ESPN’s broadcast of UConn vs. UNC last week, it would take a new coach 41, 30-win seasons or 61, 20-win seasons to catch up with Auriemma. After signing a five-year contract prior to this season, Auriemma is positioned to pad his record even further beyond reach.

Beyond the numbers, college basketball coaching has changed significantly over that past 40 years, and it’s changed exponentially over the past few seasons as college athletes have earned the right to profit off of their name, image and likeness (NIL) and while schools across the country are responding to legislation that will allow them to directly compensate student athletes.

“The world’s changed so much, the game’s changing. The role of coaches is changing. I don’t know that coaches are going to want to be spending 40 years doing the same thing in the environment that they’re … asked to do it in now. I would hope that there’s some young coach out there that thinks that they can do it — and there may be, you know — but the environment is more challenging than it’s ever been.”

At the age of 70 and in a stressful, ever-changing college athletics landscape, why does Auriemma keep showing up day in and day out to coach?

“The answer always comes back [to] — because it still matters to me. It still matters and it matters to a lot of people that I have a contact with. It matters to my assistants. It matters to my support staff. It matters to Chris, our equipment guy. It matters, it matters to those people. And you want to matter in life, right?”

Since hiring CD in his early days at UConn to recruiting this year’s top recruit, Sarah Strong, Auriemma has prioritized surrounding himself with people who make him and the program better — people who have helped shape his legendary legacy.

“I was fortunate enough to be able to to have — not every coach, actually, not any coach, not any coach in America has — had the good fortune and the privilege to have the players that I’ve had, and they took a chance [in] the early years, the early teams,” Auriemma told reporters postgame. “There was nothing here to offer them, so they were going on faith, and they took a risk by coming here. They believed that there was something that we could do that was pretty unique or different. And I’m happy for them.

“I’m thrilled because they’re gonna have a story that they’re gonna tell, and they had a — whether they had a whole chapter because of who they were, or they just have one page, or whether they have one line in the story of UConn women’s basketball — they all have a piece of it, and that makes me feel really, really, really good.”

Natalie Heavren contributed reporting to this story.

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