He tried to retire, but Geno Auriemma continues to return … and win

Tampa, Fla. – In September, Geno Auriemma left his job as a coach of Uconn. He left the gym, climbed in the car and wrote his letter of resignation in his head as he returned home as he wounded through the roads of the Connecticut.

My boys no longer feel me. I’m not going to them. They are too stubborn and I have been too stubborn. I won’t train anymore. Tomorrow I will call sick (and every day later). I finished. I’m out.

When he returned home and poured a glass of red wine, he was already conspiracy the ways to spend his pension and what he would do with his new free time. He was about to be fantastic retired, he reassured. Elite, perhaps. No more headaches. No more bad heart. No more movies.

Life is good as a retired former coach, Auriemma knows. A pile of his friends – people who entered this sector in the same period in which he did and left before doing it (because they are all much more intelligent than him, figure) – they left the bust line and not losing him at all. Lucky jerseys.

It was now one of them. Lucky to him.

For exactly eight hours … until he returned to the car, he returned to the Uconn basketball structure, went up the stairs to his office for the millionth time and sat on his chair at his desk to trace the practice of that day.

Auriemma cannot stop, even if it tries about five times a year. Since the problem is every time he really thinks about it, so his teams go in the running like this, reminding him that the players listen to him, is coming to them and they are not too stubborn to learn. Sixteen of the last 17 years, they have ended up at the Final Four and finds herself watching the arena while taking the field a few minutes before typeff, looking at her players live dreams for life and knows that she cannot leave.

National Championship n. 12 for Geno Auriemma with @Uconnwbb

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– The Athletic (@Theathletic) April 6, 2025

Before Uconn’s 82-59 victory over South Carolina In the game of the national title on Sunday, Auriemma was two minds. In February, after the Huskies had beaten the Gamecocks in their place, he heard a turn in his team. The players started buying more and understanding why they were doing things in practice. While the NCAA tournament approached, he felt well with his team.

While the post -station kicked off, the Huskies proved it well. Their three great – Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong – did quite all the games in the first rounds to advance the team, and Auriemma tried to calm his voice in his mind that constantly tells him that everything will be wrong, which in some way – in some way – ends like all the others who have not involved a cut of the net.

The four seasons before, during the Bueckers career, Uconn had been snakebit from accidents and ailments. There was the pandemic bubble in 2021, the broken finger of Dorka Juhász devoted the wrist and the Fudd stomach virus in view of the 2022 Final Four, the Bueckers tear ACL and the Palea of ​​Brady del ice in 2023, the Lacima ACL of Fudd and the Achilles of Jana El Alfy’s tendon in 2024.

While the drought of the national title of Uconn extended and other teams took the cloak, Auriemma felt the experts discuss how the Huskies had fallen and how they were no longer driven out, and instead, only part of the pack.

“All those years, I went home and thought:” They didn’t really beat the Connecticut, “said Auriemma.” When we present ourselves with our whole team and beat us, then you beat the Connecticut. The rest of the time? You have beaten a patchwork of Connecticut players. “

Entering their revenge with the southern Carolina in the game of the title, even with an arsenal complete with Connecticut players, Auriemma was in conflict. This is often the case that the coach is heard. Often he will complain that, despite being born like an ram in March, he is actually a fish (“They are two fish swimming in opposite directions. It’s me. I go constantly in two opposite directions,” he said).

On the one hand, this season reminded him of the 1995 season. That team was 34-0 in the game of the national title against Tennessee, and down six in half time, entered the locker room and said: “This was a magical season … If it ends up, it would have ended now. The reason we are here is because this is the fairy tale.” The Huskies won and delivered Auriemma his first championship trophy. This season he felt in the same way, he thought. His trip with Bueckers to get to this point could only end in one way. A national championship, right?

This could be like 1995. The gods of basketball have not brought them so far to bring them only so far, one would say.

But Auriemma is not a man who believes that the gods must have a lot at this point. Who else manages to train Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, Paige Bueckers … And all the others he has had? Who else has a career of four decade in one school? Who else wins so much?

So, Auriemma would return to Earth, he remembers that they were playing at the South Carolina, the only team he had ever beaten and the Huskies in a game of the national title. It would be said that fairy tales do not exist. The fastest that could imagine that Bueckers cut the nets, could also be seated at a podium in front of the media, explaining how everything went wrong.

“How do I intend to manage our kicked asses? What are I going to say? How will I answer these questions?” Auriemma said. “We will venerate here and stink, they will play great.”

And so the day of Auriemma went, which infiltrated between the two extremes and those who seemed the only two results of the day. It was exhausting.

But then the Huskies came out and got the fairy tale. His three great played as if they needed to play, Uconn’s defense – although not perfect as he had been in the Final Four against the UCLA – was disruptive. The offense was altruistic and aggressive. He controlled the game from the jump.

For the first 38 minutes, Auriemma refused to let herself smile or celebrate. While his assistants coaches and benches jumped out of their places and broke each other, he kept his arms folded and the corrugated forehead. He rubbed his forehead and after seeing errors, turned on the bench and screamed.

Geno Auriemma won his twelfth national championship as a coach of Uconn. (Photo by Ben Solomon / NCAA via Getty Images)

Auriemma is 71 years old. He has three children, four grandchildren and 14 players in his team who test the limits of his patience and the roots of his hair every season as he spends months trying to snatch each thread from his head. The fact that it still remains of hair is a real testimony of its genetics.

With 1:38 to play and the Huskies increasing 30, Auriemma subjected to Fudd, Strong and Bueckers. When Bueckers came out last from the floor, Auriemma hugged her as he buried his head in him. He will often joke that Uconn has reached the Stratosphere of Disneyland and Disney World – Places where the impossible happens and dreams really become reality.

Sunday, Bueckers came out of the field one last time, finally as a national champion. His dream becomes reality.

Twenty minutes later, Auriemma looked while every player and assistant went up the staircase to cut the pieces of the net until he got up to cut the final wires. He turned him around and looked back to his team. Bueckers will go to Wnba, but Fudd – the most exceptional player of the last four – and Strong will return to lead the Huskies next year.

He was joyful, relieved and yes, hungry for his neighbor. You could almost feel that even in the celebration there was a part of him who remembered: Ah, yes, that’s how it ruins me. This is why I can’t stop.

A few years ago, when Auriemma was reading a book on John Wooden, an anecdote about the recruitment of Wooden Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hit him. During a recruitment trip to New York, one of Wooden’s assistants asked Wooden if he was intentionally difficult because he didn’t want Abdul-Jabbar to come to the UCLA.

Why?

Because then Wooden knew if he had brought someone to those who had so talent, the pressure to win multiple championships would have grown – from the outside, by the university, worse than everyone, by himself. After all, how did he see so much in a single player and not raise them to their best level?

“The pressure of winning, the social pressure, the internal pressure that you will tender you, so what is accumulated … What are expected of you, what you expect from you to reach that space,” said Auriemma. “Maybe every coach who won a lot is in that situation, he heard it.”

Auriemma certainly heard it. He had more than those players who change the program of anyone else in the basketball of the female college. He won the championships with most of them, with some multiple championships. And every time he stopped at the top of that staircase and turned to his team, he saw those players who will return the following year and thought about himself: we are doing it again, right? I can’t stop five times next year until we return here again, huh?

When he went up to the top of that scale on Sunday evening, nine seasons had passed since the last time he had done it, closing a four -year race with Breanna Stewart in which the Huskies won four consecutive titles.

People tried to convince him to retire then. But he looked out and saw Napheesa Collier, Gabby Williams, Katie Lou Samuelson, and knew he couldn’t.

“When Stewie graduated, it would have been perfect. It would have been the story, right? It would have been a fairy tale – riding at sunset with the best player I ever played university basketball.” The best player and the best coach went on the same horse, “said Auriemma.” But no, stupid ass, “I can do it again.”

It took nine years, but he did it again. He found another fairy tale that ends with another group of players in another season. He turned the net and turned from one side of the arena to the other. Yes, for the twelfth time, this place ruined his life … once again.

(Photo above: Thien-AN TRONG / ISI PHOTO / GETTY Pictures)