Geno Auriemma Quotes (268 Quotes)

You always go into the NCAA tournament and make a couple of little, subtle adjustments. You may take something that looks like this and just add one piece or remove one piece, or move it around a little bit, but it still looks like this. With this group, what I did was I took some stuff that we did in November and I showed it to them again, and they think it's brand new.

The more you look around the NCAA Tournament, you see a lot of teams that had a lot of success and had a lot of trouble sustaining it. One of the things I'm happiest about is that we've been able to sustain it. Ultimately, that's going to be whether or not you were great. We've been able to do that. That's a long time, 13 years.

We tried five different people on her. Nobody could guard her. She made all kinds of shots. She's a hell of a player.

It's been kind of hectic in some ways because you're here, there and everywhere trying to cram as many activities in as you can in a short period of time. But I think the closer you get to the actual event, the more it hits home with what's real about it opposed to in the beginning it's just an idea, just a thought.

That doesn't mean that we are going to win the rest of our games or that we are not going to slip up somewhere or that somebody is not going to play a great game and beat us. But I do think we aren't going to give it away. That's for sure. I thought a while back that we might give some games away. I don't think we will give any away now. If we get beat, we get beat.

I haven't had time to think about that. But since you mention it, since I won't be in Boston Sunday or Tuesday, I wouldn't mind being in Indianapolis.

It's interesting when you know somebody when they're 17 and they come out of high school and spend some time with them on the college level. I remember the Duke game was one of the best games she ever had when I was there. Things like that just stick out in your mind.

We know we are capable of scoring a lot of points. And in the NCAA tournament, all you need is to score one more point than the other team. That is the beauty of the tournament.

I think we have a reputation of being a really good NCAA tournament team. There does seem to be a little more of an edge to our game, a little more of a focus. I don't think we get up tight. I see teams that get very, very tentative and tense at tournament time and I don't see us being like that generally. I think our approach as a coaching staff is pretty laid back. We want to reward our kids for a great season.

I thought we could get away with not playing Ann. I thought we were in pretty good shape at 12-4. I didn't know that was the highlight of the first half getting to 12.

If you're the No. 1 seed or No. 2 seed in women's basketball, there's a reason for that. You have the best team and you have the best players.

This is the game that puts you in the Final Four. To come this close and not win and have to come back and wait 12 months and be lucky enough to do it again, it's unbearable.

It's different than it was two years ago, ... People buy into teams and into personalities. We were coming off a national championship and we had the dominant personality in the country. Now we're coming off losing in the Sweet 16 and we have a bunch of nice kids that are just happy to be here. Maybe I'm going to have to rile some people up, start saying and doing stuff that stirs the pot a bit.

This time of year, a team's systems don't matter. It's individual players that end up deciding the outcomes of the games.

I think that Will, say what you will, she's going to rebound. She's going to chase balls down. She's going to play pretty good defense. And if nothing else, she understands our offense completely. She understands it like the back of her hand. She knows exactly what needs to be done.

Her conditioning is so-so. I think the rest was really good. But the rest kind of hurts you conditioning-wise because I don't care how long you ride the bike or are in the training room working out or in the pool, you've got to (get in) basketball shape playing basketball. We'll see how many (minutes) she can go and the same thing New Year's Eve (against Army) and then go from there.

We've got some good basketball left in us we haven't played yet. There's a lot that still has to come together for us and hopefully it will be Monday night.

In these types of pressure environments, I got to tell you, I'm really, really happy for these two in particular. This is as much of a complete game as we've had in a long, long time.

We needed some time. The only days we did anything was Friday and Saturday. Both of the days were more of just getting our heads rather than our bodies ready. We had a talk last night with the team and a lot of really good things came out.

I'm glad that the realization has hit that this is it, that this is your last go-around and you've got to get things done. Right now you'd say that Will has really made a commitment to herself to being one of the better players at her position in our league.

We have an opportunity to be get a share of the Big East championship. And, heck, we could even win a coin flip and be the top seed (in the tournament). Anything can happen. But first you've got to go down there and do something that's really, really hard to do and that's beat them down on their home court.

You have to temper everything, you have to say that some of the passes that we threw, if they were thrown against teams that have great athletic ability, they might have been stolen. But you look at it and you say, How many turnovers should you have if you play Albany Well, seven is a good number.

This time of year, it's the individual player that makes the difference. The things you do as a program gets you to this point. Then individuals decide the outcome of the games.

Obviously in the long term, as the season wears on, there's no way you can be as good a team without someone who is, I think, one of the best five players in the league. Meg can put up 20 points every night, and that has to be comforting. But this West Virginia team is still one of the best that I've seen. That team is very difficult to play against.

To their kids' credit, they play hard, even last year when they were losing. Their mind-set is, 'We can win,' where before they were hoping not to get beat by too much. Watching on film, they act like they can win.

Our coaches said don't worry about her. She's hitting about one 3-pointer a game. It seemed like she made one about every five minutes.

I don't think they've surprised anybody in the Big East with their performance this season. They're going to be an NCAA-level team for a long time.

I thought we ran so much that we got a little bit tired. We need more contributions from more people if we're going to keep playing like this. You worry this time of year that you get hesitant and tentative and it becomes a walk-it-up kind of game. I don't want it to be like that. I don't want to be afraid to run and afraid to lose. I just want to run up and down and make some plays and see what happens.

It's a lot like the old Virginia Tech teams we played. They're physical and they play pretty intelligently and they go after the offensive boards pretty hard. It'll probably be like the games we played against them a few years ago.

I can't believe there's 64 teams in the country better than that team that are going to be playing in the NCAA tournament.

We came out of this game feeling like Pitt lost the game rather than we won the game. We didn't beat them like we have so many other times. They are one of the most aggressive teams we have played this season. We won because we have a little more talent and little more experience.

I don't want to say anything wrong, I don't want do anything wrong. I want to do it right, and it's hard.

I was trying not to play her a lot. I thought we were in pretty good shape at 12-4. I didn't realize that was the highlight of the first half.

I think today was another reminder for our team that we can be as good as we were on Monday but when we're not all on the same page and not properly focused where we need to be, we can be just like anyone else. I'm hoping that games like this remind us, because once you get into the NCAA Tournament, you play a game like this, you're going to go home.

You're not certain you belong in this company.

Anybody that knows Rene, knows that she loves to say things that irritate people and she's one of the best in the country at it.

As I look at stuff like this I say to myself, it's kind of odd because you always think of coaching as an opportunity for your players to stand up their on that podium and put the net around their neck and celebrate winning championships. You never think of yourself as being in that situation. You're only as good as the people that you get to direct, and if you're fortunate enough to have the best people to direct then you're one of the lucky few. I think that's kind of what this is all about. So it's hard for me to put it into perspective from a personal perspective.

I know everybody has talked about parity the last couple of years, and it hasn't played out at the end of the season. But there does seem to be more even teams than in the past.

Pitt has a chance to be really good. They have a great facility. They are located in an area that is really good for high school basketball. The hardest part is winning, especially being in such a tough league. But they are winning and scoring a lot of points. People will notice. The men's program has done just that. Pittsburgh is a city that likes winners.

Any time like you have a really good point guard like they do, you have a chance to have a really good team. Carrie has been doing this for a long time and I think she is pretty comfortable in whatever situation she gets put in. She has a really good group of players that are pretty versatile.

You don't go in thinking how many can we win by and that's not the point of the game. The point of the game is if we do what we're supposed to do, we're going to win. But as you look at the game, you try to find areas where you know down the road are going to help you. The fact that we didn't turn the ball over (is good). We, for long stretches, got the right shot at the right time. We executed some things pretty well.

I hate it because there's too much dead time. They don't do anything. I mean if sleeping was a sport these guys would be first-team All-American. So what happens is when there's so much dead time you've got to try to get them to understand that you've got to fill that time wisely.

Since I'm not going to be in Boston playing Sunday and Tuesday (at the women's Final Four) I wouldn't mind being in Indianapolis.

I remember the last time we won a national championship without a great tournament from our point guards. I think it was never. And I would venture to say if our guard play isn't really, really good, it won't happen again this year.

Based on what I thought Wednesday night, when I saw what she looked like in the locker room after the game, to when I saw her Friday, I'm 100 percent more optimistic. You go from, 'it could be cracked and she's out for the rest of the season,' to 'it's a really bad sprain, but nothing that can't be taken care of.' That's a pretty big difference.

I don't remember us ever being in a situation where I thought we had it won, then lost it, thought we had it won, then lost it. It was really an amazing game. It's a shame any of those kids had to be on the other side of that. I would think in the 21 years I've been at Connecticut, I don't remember more than one or two games that turned out like this.

There's a lot of soul searching that has to go on. Maybe we just don't have it in us. Maybe we're just not good enough right now.

She has too much ability to not play well. She just came out and just shot it and made plays. She found a way to be a real basketball player (Tuesday) as opposed to just somebody who plays point guard at Connecticut and runs up and down the floor. (Tuesday) she was a real basketball player.

The thing that gets us in trouble like the first half is we play too fast. One of the terms I use with our guys is, we play like our hair's on fire. We just run around. The second half we were much more under control.

I still don't think we can guard her. But what you can do is make her have to guard you. We made it so she had to defend in the lane.