The 12-time national title-winning coach discusses Connecticut’s time on top, his bond with Paige Bueckers, the Pat Summitt rivalry and why he isn’t retiring just yet
Let’s get one thing out of the way right from the jump: UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma says he isn’t retiring anytime in the “foreseeable future”.
That may come as a relief to fans of the program who have never known anyone else to be at its helm. Though he declined to promise an exact timeline, Auriemma made one thing clear while speaking to the Guardian last week: he’s going to be sticking around.
At this point, and for decades prior, Auriemma and UConn have been synonymous. The history is well known, but let’s indulge: he began his coaching career at Bishop McDevitt High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. By 1981, he was an assistant at the University of Virginia, and he took over the head coaching job at the University of Connecticut in 1985. Auriemma was competing against many highly qualified women for the UConn job. One of those was Chris Dailey, who has coached at his side for the past 40-plus years. In that time, the Huskies have become arguably the most successful sports teams in the US.
The town of Storrs, Connecticut, and Huskies basketball, provide the backdrop for Apple TV’s three-part docuseries, The Dynasty: UConn Huskies, which premieres on Friday. The project was made with the full participation of Auriemma, who is shown in all his forms: emotional, frustrated, borderline angry, happy, thoughtful, but never reticent.
Auriemma’s decision to take part in the documentary wasn’t due to a looming sense that the end of his time at the program is near, though that’s certainly a theme that’s woven throughout, and a question that’s asked. And it’s something Auriemma clearly wanted to shut down.
Not only did the Huskies win the national championship – a feat the third episode of the series heavily focuses on – they did so with a 37-3 record. But the documentary is about much more than one season, and it was a challenge to attempt to condense 40 years of a truly singular story into something bite-sized and appealing to a broad swath of viewers, from UConn mega-fans to those who have never heard of the team.
“I don’t know that we could give a full 100% picture of the whole 40 years, you know, taking in stretches,” Auriemma says. “But I think it gives a pretty clear picture of what we do, who we are, what we value, what we stand for, how hard we work, how committed we are. So in that respect, I think it was pretty on point.”
Dailey is featured in the series but perhaps not as prominently as someone who has led the Huskies alongside Auriemma this entire time. That wasn’t on purpose, he says. “I think that if you’re here on a regular basis, or if you watch us, everything that we do, Chris is a huge part of everything that we do. Is it possible to do what we’ve done without her input? No, I don’t think so.”
When it comes to what UConn does, the list is exhaustive. It includes 12 NCAA Division I national championships, more than 50 conference and regular-season title, and the longest winning streak in men’s or women’s college basketball history. More than 50 Huskies have gone on to play in the WNBA; as of May, 17 were on active rosters. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
While the team’s coaches are crucial, the athletes who have made up UConn’s rosters over the years represent a who’s who of the women’s game, including Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Napheesa Collier, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, Swin Cash, Tina Charles, Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. Many of them participated in the film, which underscored the idea that to speak of UConn is to speak of Auriemma, and to speak of Auriemma is to speak of all the women, from Dailey to Moore to Bueckers and more, who have been a foundational part of his legacy.
Lobo will go down in history as the first big get of Auriemma’s career, and someone who took the program from the unknown and rocketed it firmly into the known. Taurasi, whose own eponymous documentary premiered on Amazon Prime last year, was open and relaxed while looking back on her time with the program.
Taurasi, Auriemma says, didn’t want her own documentary to be a puff piece “and make her look like Lady Di”. At UConn “we talk a lot about when you’re really, really good, you don’t have to say anything. Other people say it for you.”
But it’s Bueckers who makes Auriemma’s eyes light up as soon as her name is mentioned. The pair’s up and down relationship is documented in the series, and it seems much more up than down – the pair still speak weekly, Auriemma says.
Bueckers spoke to reporters about how she’s grown as a leader while at All-Star Weekend in Chicago last month. Auriemma, who stomped that path alongside her, says that leadership was “one of the big struggles we had”.
