How Geno's early days at UConn built a foundation for the dynasty

When Geno Auriemma took over as UConn’s head coach in 1985, the program didn’t have much. The Huskies had one winning season in their history, played in a gym that leaked when it rained and had to be shared with other teams and clubs on campus. When they had home games, barely anyone showed up to watch.

They had two full-time coaches: Auriemma and Chris Dailey — and even she had to teach a jogging class early on — along with a graduate assistant and a part-timer. In their office, they had a rotary phone that they shared with track coach Greg Bibb.

The school itself didn’t add much, either. Far from the so-called “Public Ivy” that it is today, UConn was viewed as a safety school where most kids went home for the weekend. The campus was somehow even more remote than it is now with few amenities to speak of.

“We started at nothing,” Auriemma said. “We didn't have the advantages of location. We didn't have the advantages of the reputation of the school. We didn't have the luxury of a big time league that could elevate us. We didn’t have luxury of facilities. We started at the absolute ground level and it's evolved into this.”

40 years later, UConn is the premier women’s basketball program with 11 national championships, six undefeated seasons, 59 conference titles, 14 national player of the year winners and two win streaks of 90+ games.

On Wednesday, another accolade will be added to the list. With a win over Fairleigh Dickinson at Gampel Pavilion, Geno Auriemma will pass Tara VanDerveer as the winningest college basketball coach in history — men’s or women’s — with 1,217 career victories.

That meteoric rise is still hard to fathom — even for those who did it.

“It's so improbable,” Auriemma said. “I walk around and go, ‘How did we build this?’ Because why? Why us? Why here? Why then? Why now?”

Surviving the early struggles

When Auriemma took over, UConn was the doormat of the fledgling Big East Conference. The Huskies had a 4-28 all-time regular season record in the league, a 1-3 mark in the conference tournament and never finished higher than seventh. Initially, they just wanted to stay out of the basement.

“Our first year, our goal was definitely not to finish last — and we didn't,” Dailey said.

UConn instead landed in seventh but beyond that, there wasn’t much to celebrate. The team went just 4-12 in the Big East — a one-win improvement on the previous season — and got bounced in the first round of the tournament by Villanova.

In 1986, the Huskies brought in Kris Lamb, Auriemma’s first recruit who he got to know as a Virginia assistant before convincing her to join him in Storrs. The result? UConn more than doubled its win total in the Big East to 9-7 then repeated that record the next season.

Still, the Huskies weren’t a particularly good team. In 1986-87, they lost games to the likes of Holy Cross, Northeastern, La Salle and US International University — the latter of which doesn’t even exist anymore. The year after, UConn fell to New Hampshire and St. Joseph’s (PA).

Even with Auriemma and associate head coach Chris Dailey at the helm, it was a far cry from the program we know today.

“We made a lot of mistakes, I think, early on — like you would expect,” Auriemma said. “We took some chances on some kids. We got most of them right. We got some wrong.”

Yet the pair had time to learn from those mistakes and improve. The empty crowds they played in front of were almost a blessing in disguise. The lack of attention and interest in the program allowed them to survive the early struggles without much scrutiny.

“The one thing [when] I think back is we were doing it in a space that no one cared about,” Auriemma said. “So there wasn't a lot of explaining to do to anybody other than the players.”

Building the core

The earliest foundation of UConn’s eventual dynasty arrived on campus in the fall of 1987. That’s when the Huskies brought in their first big recruits: Kerry Bascom out of Epping, New Hampshire and Laura Lishness from Bristol, Connecticut. The tandem, along with Lamb, then a sophomore, “probably got it going in the right direction,” as Auriemma put it.

Yet the 1988 offseason would prove to be even more crucial. UConn overhauled its roster, returning just four of 13 players from the previous season. At the time, Dailey agonized about cleaning house.

“I was like, ‘I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if I want to go through this,’” she recalled.

Lishness helped convince her it was the right decision.

“We're going to be good and we're gonna have people that want to be here and want to be coached by you guys,” she told Dailey.

With the the roster cleared, the Huskies added a transformative seven-player freshman class of Debbie Baer (Fiske), Wendy Davis, Meghan Pattyson (Culmo), Shannon Saunders, Pamela Rothfuss, Stacey Wetzel and Kathleen Bantley. Bantley served as the manager the previous season and joined the team as a player just to give them another body.

That infusion of talent paid immediate dividends. UConn had a breakout season in 1988-89, winning the Big East regular season championship with a 13-2 record then capturing the conference tournament title with three double-digit victories.

“We ended up having the best season ever,” Dailey said.

From there, the Huskies began their ascent.

“When Meghan's class came in, I think that was the finishing touch,” Auriemma said. “That's what we needed. We had had Kris who got us from last to not last. Then Kerry and Laura took us, and then when those guys came, they paired up with Kerry and Laura and everything just took off from there.”

Gampel Pavilion and the ‘91 Final Four team

While UConn finally had a team that could compete in the Big East, it still struggled on the national stage. The Huskies were bounced in the opening round of their first two NCAA Tournaments and nearly made it three in a row. In 1991, they trailed Toledo by two at Gampel Pavilion, only to be saved by a late three-point play by Bascom.

With the monkey off their backs, UConn dispatched NC State in the Sweet Sixteen then beat Clemson 60-57 in the Elite Eight to advance to the program’s first Final Four. The latter remains one of the most meaningful victories in Auriemma’s career.

“Including the national championships, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life, in my career as a coach, that I’ve ever been more emotional than I was that night,” he said back in 2020. “The culmination of three years with that group.”

The Huskies eventually fell to Virginia in the national semifinal but that didn’t matter. Just getting that far was important. They were the first team north of the Mason-Dixon Line to reach the Final Four and the first non-traditional power.

Auriemma has long credited the 1991 team for opening the door for everything else to follow.

“If that [Final Four] didn’t happen, none of this would’ve happened. Zero. Not even close to happening,” Auriemma said in 2020. “Because nobody would’ve seen us play, we never would’ve been on television, never been to the Final Four, nothing. We would’ve just been a bunch of kids who played basketball and moved on with the rest of their lives.”

But UConn never would’ve had a shot at the Final Four if not for a crucial development on campus: The opening of Gampel Pavilion in 1990. That gave the Huskies a facility on par with other top programs around the country — a big step up from Hugh Greer Field House.

Without Gampel, UConn would’ve remained a regional program that did well in the Big East and occasionally made a run in the NCAA Tournament. But the Huskies never would’ve become a national power — and Auriemma would be preparing to break the all-time wins record at some other school.

“Had Gampel not been built, it would’ve been impossible to stay beyond that Final Four year,” he said. “Matter of fact, I don’t know that we would’ve ever gone to the Final Four if we didn’t have that building in the mix.”

Instead, Auriemma will become the all-time wins leader in the building that changed the trajectory of the program — and really the rest of the athletic department — on Wednesday night.

Given all the success that’s followed since that Final Four in 1991, the early years of Auriemma’s tenure often get overlooked. They were tough — nearly a quarter of his career losses (39 of 162) came in those first three seasons — but they also set the foundation for the rest of the dynasty.

“It would seem very improbable and almost impossible but when you're in it, I don't think we ever thought that. We never looked at what we didn't have. We always focused on what we had,” Dailey said. “Eventually, 40 years later, a lot more has happened than what we ever thought would have.”