Why Geno's still at UConn after 40 years

Geno Auriemma never intended to be at UConn all that long. When he took over as the head coach in 1985, his plan was to get through a full recruiting cycle of four years and then see where the program was at that point.

“I gave it four [years],” he said. “I figured if I can go through four years, we can go from last to fourth.”

At the time, there wasn’t much to keep him in Storrs. The Huskies didn’t have anything in the way of facilities — Hugh Greer Field House was a downgrade for most incoming players compared to their high schools — to the point that the school didn’t even show them to Auriemma during the hiring process.

“I never saw anything,” he said. “I knew what I was getting myself into at the time. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was worse than I thought when I got here. But I kind of knew what I was getting myself into.”

Not that it mattered, though. Auriemma wasn’t drawn to UConn because of facilities, prestige or history. He didn’t believe it was some sleeping giant or even that it’d be a great place to live and raise a family.

He just wanted to be a head coach somewhere — anywhere. UConn just happened to be the first one who gave him a shot.

“I'd already missed out on two other opportunities, so this was the third one that I pursued,” Auriemma explained. “If you keep going and you keep coming up short, that's not a good sign, right? And if you can't get a good job of coming out of UVA after going from unranked to like, we were 10th in a country — that's a bad sign. That says something about you personally. So yeah, I just wanted the opportunity. That's it.”

Perhaps that desire to take over a program clouded his judgement. He accepted the job first and decided to figure out everything else later. But in late August, before the new school year even began, Auriemma and his wife, Kathy, went for a walk near the East Brook Mall in Mansfield.

Suddenly, he wondered if he’d made a giant mistake.

“I was just so anxious for the opportunity,” he said. “We went outside and we looked around — now think about this: It's 40 years ago, right? It's not exactly Manhattan — New York or Kansas, right? I just took a deep breath, I looked at her, and I said, ‘What are we doing here? Like, why are we here?’ This was August. We hadn't even started yet, but the reality hit both of us.

“We just left Charlottesville, Virginia, the University of Virginia — probably in the top 10 places in college athletics to want to be at and live at — and we're here,” he continued. “Good thing I didn't dwell on that because that's when it dawned on me: This is going to be very daunting. This is going to be really, really hard. And there's not a whole lot of people that are going to be stepping up to help you.”

40 years later, Auriemma is still the head coach at UConn. At the end of his four-year plan, the Huskies won their first Big East championships. Two years after that, they went to their first Final Four. Another four years later, they won it all for the first time.

Since that day in August in 1985, they’ve piled on 11 national champions, 59 conference championships and win streaks of 90 and 111 games. Another achievement got added to the list last Wednesday: In a ho-hum 85-45 victory over Fairleigh Dickson, Auriemma became the winningest coach in college basketball history.

While it represents UConn’s success over the last four decades — he’s averaged 31 wins per year — it’s also a lifetime achievement award. Not only has Auriemma simply coached for 40 years (an impressive feat by itself), he’s kept the program at an elite level for the last three quarters of that stretch.

Among all his accomplishments, that’s what he’s most proud of.

“I would say the longevity of it,” Auriemma said. “How many iterations of leagues and all the changes that have happened in those four decades, and we've been able to adapt and be successful in all all four of them.”

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