How Chris Dailey has been central to UConn's success

Dailey's been Auriemma's top lieutenant ever since he became the head coach of the Huskies.

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Daniel Connolly
November 28, 2024

Photo: Ian Bethune

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How Chris Dailey has been central to UConn's success

Chris Dailey doesn’t remember exactly when she met Geno Auriemma for the first time, just that it was somewhere on the recruiting trail one summer. At the time, she was just beginning her career as a coach after graduating from Rutgers in 1982 while Auriemma worked on Debbie Ryan’s staff at Virginia.

Dailey remembers her initial impression of him.

“He certainly had a presence about him. I had met him, I guess, at a game or whatever,” she said. “I knew he thought he was pretty swell. He thought highly of himself — as did other people, too.”

Yet when the two saw each other again at the Final Four the following spring, he didn’t recognize Dailey.

“He acted like he didn't know me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Who's this guy?’”

It didn’t take long for that to change. The second meeting at the Final Four proved to be the start of “a real friendship”, as Dailey put it. When Auriemma became the head coach at a backwater program in Storrs, Connecticut and could only hire one full-time assistant, the choice was easy.

“I thought she was the best person for the job,” Auriemma said last week. “I just knew that going in, I needed to have someone that was able to accentuate whatever positives I had and at the same time, be able to mask a lot of the things that I knew would be coming along that I didn't really have the skill set for.

“I just thought she was the best person to fill all those roles and I was lucky that she accepted.”

40 years later, Dailey remains his top lieutenant and has been integral — indispensable, even — to UConn’s success. Through 11 national championships, 59 conference titles, two record-breaking win streaks of 90 and 111 games, and 1,218 career victories, Dailey has been there for all of it. Actually, she’s been on the sideline for more of those wins than Auriemma, owning a perfect 17-0 record as acting head coach.

The partnership has been successful because, at its core, the two are aligned in what they want for the program.

“We are alike… in terms of our philosophy and what we saw as the vision for UConn, in terms of how we wanted our teams to behave, how we wanted to look, how hard we wanted to play,” Dailey explained. “What we thought about all those things, we were on the same page.”

How they set out to accomplish those goals has always been different, though. Auriemma is the ideas guy, Dailey is the one who makes it happen. During practice, Auriemma will yell and rip into his players. Dailey is still firm but takes a more tactful approach. Off the court, it’s the other way around. Dailey sets the standard for how players conduct themselves while Auriemma is the self-proclaimed fun one.

“They won't admit it but the players would much rather hang out with me,” he quipped, “because she's just always on them about things that they need her to be on them about.”

Perhaps the most remarkable part of Dailey’s tenure is that she’s still at UConn after 40 seasons. She never left to become a head coach elsewhere — though she did listen to a few offers. In particular, Dailey interviewed and seriously considered two schools (though she didn’t reveal who). Auriemma corroborated that, saying: “There were a couple that I knew she was very, very, very excited about.”

Ultimately, Dailey decided that she was better off staying at UConn.

“The timing just didn't work for me at that point,” Dailey said. “Then it gets to a point where you really love where you are and you find fewer and fewer places that you're drawn to or that you're interested in.”

“If I was going to leave, it had to be for a place that I felt confident that they had everything that I would need to be successful,” she added later. “A belief and a vision and a commitment. The more you know, there are fewer of those places that exist.”

It helped that Auriemma always treated Dailey as an equal partner, too. When he offered her the job at UConn, he didn’t want her to come work for him. Instead, he presented it as a “shared endeavor,” which has remained true in the decades since.

“He wants you to have an opinion. He wants you to challenge him,” Dailey said. “He challenges you as as a coach, as a person, and I think that's one reason why we've been able to last and work together for so long. I think if it was status quo, it would be easy to get bored. But it's not. It's never boring with him.”

Auriemma doesn’t just share responsibilities with Dailey, either. When UConn planned festivities around the night that he was expected to become college basketball’s all-time wins leader, he made sure Dailey was included in the celebration too.

That meant the world to her.

“I don't know of any other head coach that would be as willing to share the limelight as he is,” a choked up Dailey said. “I just think it says everything about him and and I am appreciative for all the responsibilities he's given me and the trust that he has in me. Being able to share this with him in this way is really special to me.”

After all, without Dailey, there wouldn’t be nearly as much to celebrate — and Auriemma is the first to admit that.

“If she hadn’t said yes when I asked her 40 years ago, it's safe to say that it wouldn't have happened. It's too much involved. It's too big,” he said after becoming the all-time wins leader. “There were too many things to do that I could never have been able to do.”

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