Geno Auriemma

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Geno Auriemma (born March 23, 1954 in Montella, Italy) is an Italian-American basketball coach, best known as the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team, in which capacity Auriemma has led the Huskies to five National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I national championships (in 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004) and has garnered five national Naismith College Coach of the Year awards.

He emigrated with his family to Norristown, Pennsylvania when he was seven years old, and spent the rest of his childhood there. After graduating from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in 1977, Auriemma was hired as an assistant coach at Saint Joseph's University, where he worked in 1978 and 1979. After a two-year absence from college basketball, Auriemma, in 1981, assumed an assistant coaching position with the University of Virginia Cavaliers, from whom he was hired by Connecticut in August 1985. Auriemma became a naturalized United States citizen in 1994, noting in his autobiography that he finally decided to naturalize when his UConn team was slated to tour Italy that summer and he was concerned about potential problems because he had never done any required national service.

Before Auriemma, the Huskies had posted just one winning season in their entire history. They quickly rose to prominence: they finished 12-15 in Auriemma's first season, his only losing season at Connecticut. Since then, Connecticut has finished above .500 for 20 consecutive seasons, including two perfect seasons, 1994-95 and 2001-02, and an NCAA record streak of 70 consecutive wins. Through the close of the 2005-06 season, Auriemma's record as a head coach was 589-116 (83.5%).

The team has been especially successful on its home court in the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Connecticut; they tied an NCAA women's basketball record with 69 consecutive home wins between 2000 and 2003. Moreover, between Auriemma's arrival and the close of the 2005 season, they have won 295 games versus just 31 losses. At Gampel, the team has set Big East Conference records for both single-game and season-long attendance.

Auriemma is also known for his success in cultivating individual players, and the eight multiple-All-America players—Rebecca Lobo, Jennifer Rizzotti, Kara Wolters, Nykesha Sales, Svetlana Abrosimova, Sue Bird, Swin Cash, and Diana Taurasi—whom Auriemma has coached have combined to win three Naismith College Player of the Year awards, four Wade Trophies, and two NCAA Basketball Tournament Most Outstanding Player awards. (The UConn athletics website also notes that, through 2006-07, every recruited freshman who has finished her eligibility at Storrs has graduated with a degree.)

The rivalry between the Huskies and the University of Tennessee Lady Vols has extended to Auriemma's relationship with Volunteers counterpart Pat Summitt; the two, though print and broadcast media are often interlocutors. A supposed tension between Auriemma and men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun was appreciated by many, but the two apparently reconciled after the teams garnered national championships, on consecutive nights, in 2004.

During the college basketball offseason, Auriemma serves as an analyst for games of the Women's National Basketball Association broadcast on the American cable television networks ESPN and ESPN2, in which capacity he often critiques his former players. [1]

In 2006, Auriemma was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee.