UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma once declared that his 40-year legacy with the program is built on the successes of his former and current players. This is a significant chunk of what Auriemma discussed during the celebration of his record-breaking 1217th win with the Huskies in Nov. 2024.
Coach Auriemma believes his legacy is defined by how his players’ journeys look from when they were aspiring to make it into his program, the time they shared, and the great things they achieved afterwards.
“Each player that played here has their own story, some of it’s a nightmare, some of it’s a fairy tale. You can’t draw up Stewie and Tuck and Moriah and that whole team, you can’t draw up that story because that is a fairy tale, to go to college, play four years, and win four national championships; that doesn’t happen. But what is also a fairy tale are those kids that came here as walk-ons and just wanted to be part of it,” Auriemma explained (5:00).
“And yet, they were treated just like they were a two-time National Player of the Year coming out of high school. They were treated with the same level of respect as the best player in the country was. And then eventually, they got a scholarship, and then they graduated and went on to do great things,” he continued.
The Huskies’ win on Nov. 20 of last year granted Auriemma his 1217th win as a college basketball head coach, surpassing the previous record of legendary Stanford Cardinal tactician Tara VanDerveer. The program was able to accomplish this by defeating the FDU Knights by 44 points, 85-41, on their home floor.
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The strongest part of his legacy is the impact his program makes on his players, says Geno Auriemma
Later on in his speech that celebrated both his 1217th win as the UConn Huskies coach and the 40th anniversary of his partnership with associate head coach Chris Dailey, Auriemma shared that his players who were not highly-touted in high school but ended up making an impact in UConn and beyond are the strongest part of his continued legacy in basketball as a whole.
“For those players, it truly was a fairy tale come true because they were never recruited. They were never thought of as playing at this level, and yet, we gave them that opportunity. And then, they gave us that sense of this is what you’re doing to people’s lives. No amount of championships and no amount of numbers or awards or anything like that can take the place of the lives that we’ve impacted that they’ve allowed us to impact. That, to me, is the strongest part,” Auriemma said (5:45).
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