STORRS, Conn. — If you thought UConn coach Geno Auriemma would immediately get all emotional and sentimental, then you probably haven’t been paying attention for the last 40 years. If you imagined he would sit back and take in the moment instead of getting in his steps on the sideline, then you haven’t paid much attention to how he got to this point.
Instead, when Auriemma notched career win No. 1,217 with an 85-41 victory over Fairleigh Dickinson to become the all-time winningest college basketball coach, it was impossible not to see first the relief and then how much his head was spinning.
Even as the streamers fell, 10,000 fans chanted “Ge-no! Ge-no!” and 63 of his former players filtered onto the floor to line up on the baseline, Auriemma puttered around midcourt with his frustrations seemingly emanating off him.
As he walked around the court, his former players closed in around him.
It’s impossible to quantify 1,217 wins or comprehend how Wednesday was really any different from Tuesday for Auriemma. He’ll say it wasn’t. The numbers, as concrete as they are, become a bit amorphous the larger they get: 40 years, 11 national titles, 23 Final Fours, six undefeated seasons.
But people? They trigger something in him. When he took the mic during Wednesday night’s postgame celebration, his voice broke when he began to talk about his players.
“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,” Auriemma said. “But they all had an impact on us.”
He went on.
“When it’s over, whenever it is, whenever this is all over, what we’ll remember is tonight. We’ll remember this,” he said, looking at his players. “And I’ll remember each and every one of my players. I’ll remember when they were 17 and the look in their eyes of, ‘Coach, can you help me do this?’ … Now we look back 40 years later, and I’ll say I don’t know how much I helped them, but they helped me get everything I wanted.”
In the crowd were the players everyone knows: Diana Taurasi, a six-time Olympian and the WNBA’s leading scorer; Sue Bird, a five-time Olympian and the WNBA’s leader in assists and games played; Maya Moore, a two-time Olympian and four-time WNBA champion. But there were also players few remember: three players off Auriemma’s inaugural 1985 team (the only losing season he has ever had as a coach), former walk-ons and those who never became Olympians or All-Americans. Breanna Stewart, Swin Cash and Shea Ralph couldn’t attend, but they sent videos. Stewart is a WNBA MVP and champion, and she founded a new women’s basketball league. Cash is one of the highest-ranking women in an NBA front office. Ralph went on to lead her own college program at Vanderbilt.
Auriemma has coached 40 years’ worth of players who will go on to change the next 40 years of women’s basketball. That’s what and who surrounded him — the players who represent the past and future of the game.
“It made it easy to answer the question about how I feel about what just happened,” Auriemma said of breaking the record. “To just point over there and say, ‘This is what I was fortunate enough to have.’ Not any coach in America has had the good fortune to have the players I’ve had.”
When the festivities finally ended and Auriemma had a chance to sit down, he said the moments he would remember most from the night were the speeches from Bird, Moore, Taurasi and Rebecca Lobo. They each focused on what Auriemma and the program meant to them. Bird thanked Auriemma and his longtime assistant, Chris Dailey, for impacting lives. Moore said the evening felt like she was coming home for family dinner. Lobo highlighted that everyone was part of an evening that featured a record that will likely never be broken again.
There was a specialness to the night, which is what all those players came home for.
When Taurasi took the mic, it hit Auriemma differently. He’s probably closer to her than any player he has coached.
“What can you say to coach Auriemma and CD that hasn’t been said before? The good, the bad and the stuff you don’t want to hear when you get here,” Taurasi said. “As I see everyone here, whether we played on the same team, decades apart, we always put this jersey on to represent you because we know how much you love this team, the game of basketball and your family. … We always come back because of you, Coach. We come back because of you. Don’t you ever forget that.”
During the four speeches, Auriemma stood with other players, shifting from side to side. His former players combined to give Auriemma — the non-sentimentalist — a piece of his own medicine.
As much as the win total might say about Auriemma and what he has accomplished at UConn, perhaps this number is the one that’s most telling: 63. Sixty-three of his former players came from all across the country and stood shoulder to shoulder, stretching across an entire baseline, to celebrate a coach who impacted them, and for whom they returned the favor.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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