My guys don’t hear me anymore. I’m not getting through to them. They’re too stubborn, and I’ve been too stubborn. I’m not going to practice anymore. I’ll call in sick tomorrow (and every day after that). I’m done. I’m out.
By the time he got home and poured himself a glass of red wine, he was already plotting out ways to spend his retirement and what he’d do with his newfound free time. He was going to be great in retirement, he reassured himself. Elite, perhaps. No more headaches. No more heartaches. No more film.
Life is good as a retired former coach, Auriemma knows. A bunch of his friends — folks who came into this business around the same time he did and departed before he did (because they’re all much smarter than he is, he figures) — have left the sideline and don’t miss it at all. Lucky jerks.
Now he was one of them. Lucky him.
For exactly eight hours … until he got back in his car, drove back to the UConn basketball facility, walked up the stairs to his office for the millionth time and sat down in the chair at his desk to plot out that day’s practice.
Auriemma can’t quit, even though he tries roughly five times a year. Because the problem is whenever he really thinks about it, then his teams go on a run like this one just did, reminding him that the players do hear him, he is getting through to them and they’re not too stubborn to learn. Sixteen out of the last 17 years, they’ve ended up at the Final Four, and he finds himself looking out at the arena as he takes the court a few minutes before tipoff, watching his players live out lifelong dreams, and he knows he can’t walk away.
National Championship No. 12 for Geno Auriemma with @UConnWBB
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— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 6, 2025
Before UConn’s 82-59 win over South Carolina in Sunday’s national title game, Auriemma was of two minds. Back in February, after the Huskies had beaten the Gamecocks down at their place, he felt a shift in his team. Players started buying in more and understanding why they were doing the things in practice. As the NCAA Tournament approached, he felt good about his team.
As the postseason kicked off, the Huskies proved him right. Their big three — Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong — did enough every game in the early rounds to push the team forward, and Auriemma tried to quiet the voice in his mind that consistently tells him everything will go wrong, that this season will — somehow — end like all the others that didn’t involve a net cutting.
The four seasons before this, during Bueckers’ career, UConn had been snakebitten by injuries and ailments. There was the pandemic bubble in 2021, Dorka Juhász’s broken finger dislocated wrist and Fudd’s stomach virus ahead of the Final Four in 2022, Bueckers’ ACL tear and Ice Brady’s dislocated patella in 2023, Fudd’s ACL tear and ...
