How Geno stays motivated after all these years

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Headlines

News

• UConn women’s basketball to face Iowa State in Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase

• Geno Auriemma signs five-year contract extension

• Geno provides updates on UConn's five injured players

Analysis

• Predicting UConn's starting lineup next season: Mailbag, part two

Last week’s Weekly

• Top storylines as UConn begins summer workouts

With contract extension, Geno still motivated to keep coaching

Contractually, Geno Auriemma is locked in as UConn women’s basketball’s head coach for the next five years after agreeing to an $18.7 million extension. But that doesn’t mean he’ll definitely coach five more years.

“Somebody can sign a lifetime contract, that doesn't mean they're going to coach to the end of their life,” Auriemma said on Tuesday. “I thought it was a good number. I thought it gave me enough time to do what I need to do.”

The good news? That works both ways.

“That doesn't mean I won't stay longer,” the coach added. “For right now, that's what I'm happy with. That's a good number for me right now.”

Over the years, Auriemma has made it clear that he doesn’t know when he’ll retire. He does know why he’ll eventually walk away.

“Obviously there’s an end to this but in the meantime, you keep feeling like ‘I want to be around this kid for a couple of years’ and I know that’s going to go away — just not right now,” Auriemma reiterated.

As long as UConn keeps bringing in the types of players that Auriemma wants to coach, he wants to keep coaching.

“I would like to see what it's like if you can string together three or four years with the way it used to be where there were no injuries,” he said. “You had everybody available that was on your team. I'd like to see what it would be like if we had the opportunity to do that once again.”

With the dramatic changes happening in the world of college athletics over the last few years — namely the introduction of name, image and likeness agreements for athletes, as well as the increase in player movement through the transfer portal — some high-profile coaches have stepped away. In men’s basketball, Duke’s Mike Kryzewski, Villanova’s Jay Wright and UNC’s Roy Williams all retired in a 13-month span. More recently, Alabama football coach Nick Saban put an end to his legendary career.

There were moments that Auriemma seemed to be on a similar track recently. Yet he’s changed his tune with the new contract extension in hand.

“I think last year maybe changed my mind about things. Like if you'd have told me before last year, I would say, ‘It's getting harder and harder to do this job.’ Which it is, don't get me wrong. In your right mind, you would want no part of this at my age because it's totally opposite, totally foreign to what we grew up doing in this profession. You can't do your job the way you used to,” he explained.

“Everybody says ‘You gotta adapt.’ Well, how do you adapt? You go out and find the most money and buy the most players. That's how you adapt. That's not adapting. That's just giving in to what it is. today. That's great. And I know everybody has to do it, and I'm okay with it.”

It’s not that Auriemma is just embracing the new age of college athletics with open arms, either. He isn’t giving out big NIL deals on the recruiting trail or building an entire roster out of transfers.

“It wasn't like, ‘Here's my offer sheet.’ It was ‘Obviously we're going to take care of you. But if that's going to be the first thing you talk to me about, that's a nonstarter,’” he explained.

UConn also uses the transfer market to supplement its existing core, not build it. Of the Huskies’ five additions through the portal since 2018, four already had undergraduate degrees and all but two had just a single season of eligibility left.

Despite player movement being at an all-time high, Auriemma wants to prove it can still be done the old-fashioned way.

“I think there's a lot of kids out there that really, really want this experience and I want to believe in them,” he said. “I want to trust that there's still a lot of those kids out there that are not looking to play at four schools in four years, that want to commit to something long term. I think they're out there and I'm going to try to find them.”

It’s still working for the Huskies. Their current roster features three No. 1 recruits and five other top-10 recruits. They’ve used all but one of their 15 scholarships — more than usual.

As long as that keeps happening, Auriemma wants to stick around.

“It makes it worthwhile. Makes you feel like you're having an impact,” he said. “The worst thing that happens, you go through a stretch when you feel like ‘I'm not having the impact I used to have,’ and you think it's you and you think it's time to move on. Then things change and all of a sudden… you realize, ‘Yeah, I still have an impact.’”

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The team has arrived for summer workouts:

…and went to the Sun game on Tuesday: