While coach Shea Ralph was leading her Vanderbilt women’s basketball team to a 94-45 win over Hampton, her mentor Geno Auriemma set the NCAA basketball wins record with his 1217th at the helm of the UConn women’s basketball program. That mark is the most for any coach in college basketball of either gender.
Ralph was just 6 years old when Auriemma took over the Huskies. She played for UConn from 1996 to 2001, winning a national title in 2000. She joined the program as an assistant in 2008 and remained there until taking the Vanderbilt job in 2021. She was part of the team’s historic 111-game winning streak from 2014 to 2017 and four consecutive national titles from 2013 to 2016.
Ralph’s mother played basketball at North Carolina and was close with Pat Summitt, leading many to assume Ralph would attend either North Carolina or Tennessee, she said. But Auriemma’s honesty and his tough style of coaching appealed to her.
“Coach Auriemma was the most honest with me that any coach had ever been,” Ralph said Wednesday. “And I think that’s molded not only me as a player, but the opportunity to play there for him changed my life, because I needed somebody to be as hard on me as he was, to teach me how to be great, to show me how to be resilient, to show me how to be a team player, because I was very selfish and stubborn as a young kid, and I had a lot that I needed to learn. So thankfully, I made a really good choice, and I went there and played for him.”
As a player, Ralph celebrated Auriemma’s 450th win. She recalled the recruiting pitch she used with the Huskies, which was that since 1988, every player who has gone to UConn has gone to at least one Final Four.
“The cool thing for me was that I got to peek behind the curtain for almost 20 years,” she said. “And people talk about it being a machine and all that. Yeah, it is. But those people care, and they get the best out of their players. They have people that come in, coaches and staff members, year in and year out, that just are really special. And for them to do what they’ve done is a testament to great leadership, great work ethic. And say what you want to say, but he’s the best coach in the history of our game.”
When informed by Vanderbilt’s sports information director after the game that Ralph had been part of 626 of Auriemma’s 1,217 wins, she remained focused on her team’s task at hand: “626 at Vanderbilt, let’s aim for that.”
SIGNING CLASS What Shea Ralph said about Vanderbilt women’s basketball 2025 signing class
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter, @aria_gerson.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt’s Shea Ralph on UConn coach Geno Auriemma wins record
