Geno Auriemma Quotes (268 Quotes)

You go to college to find out about yourself and I'll bet you nobody found out more about themselves in the four years at Connecticut than Barbara Turner. So you've got to be really happy for the kid.

He and I talk all the time about playing again and we probably will. They're a really good team to play. I think he runs the kind of program that I would enjoy matching up against from a competitive standpoint and from a personal standpoint that I have a lot of respect for him and I have a really good relationship with him. I would want to do it if we could.

We have a bunch of kids who just don't have the confidence to play here. They don't necessarily exude confidence when they walk out onto the floor. For one of the few times in the 20 years that I have been here, I walk out on the floor and I don't know that my team shares the same belief I do about how we are going to play and compete.

My hope is that sometime in the next 24 hours, we play as close to our ability as we can. I wouldn't be at all disappointed if around 1130 Tuesday night, I'm saying that's the best game we played all year. That would be pretty good. Right now, we need to play one of the best games we've played.

I don't think we forced the ball and tried to make plays that are hard to make. We tried to keep it simple. You look at it, how many turnovers should you have when you play Albany Seven is a good number. If it were 17, I'd be really disappointed. But those seven could easily be 17 or 20 next week against a better team. You hope it gets better every game where our guys see things.

She's careless and when you're careless all of a sudden it starts to chip away at your confidence because you start making just enough mistakes that are just careless mistakes. Some of it is just that you've got to be more attentive and your intensity level's got to be a lot higher. We need Renee to play at a real high level in order for this team to move forward.

It's kind of odd. She coached players who won national championships. She made women's basketball acceptable. And yet, she's not in the Hall of Fame. People say it's because she didn't coach long enough. I don't care whether she coached three years. When you win three national championships, you're in the Hall of Fame. So there's a lot of people that aren't in that should be.

When I look back, that's probably the one thing that I'm going to remember more than anything, not so much the championships, the wins, but I think we made the Big East take women's basketball seriously. I think we made people around the country pay attention to what we were doing. Because of that, it showed a lot of people out there that there's an unbelievable game out there that people were missing.

Whether it's Phoenix or whether it's any other team in that league, they're not going to offer me more money than I'm making at Connecticut. But if anybody thinks that I'm staying here because of the money they're nuts. I didn't come here for the money and I'm not going to stay here for the money. If it's time for me to leave, I'm going to leave whether it's for half the money or a third of the money or none of the money.

At this time of year, everything is about confidence. About your ability to make the play that needs to be made at the time it needs to be made. That's everything at this time of year. And the bottom line is, if you have those guys that make those plays, you win.

The strength of your league is what is going on in the middle. We have always been good at the top. But we will have teams finishing 10th, 11th 12th in our league who are pretty darned good, and I don't know that anybody else has that.

There's 22 practice days between today and our first game Nov. 12. You would like to lay the foundation, like you would with a house, and the success of your team depends on what you build those 22 practice days. Last year, we were never able to get after it because of those situations. I don't see that as an issue right now, cross your fingers.

I think the only time individual awards really impress upon you as a kid is when you get to share them with your teammates. What you share with your teammates is the big award, the conference championship. So if you get an individual award and the team gets nothing, you feel kind of like half-empty.

It's never easy to lose and it's especially difficult to lose if there's a conference championship at stake. So there's a tremendous amount of frustration right now and it's going to take us a while for us to get over that. This is one of the bigger challenges that we've ever had as a coaching staff and as a program in the last 10, 15 years. I'm looking forward to it, but at the same time, I know how difficult it's going to be.

We don't score on sheer individual talent. Sometimes we run stuff just to run stuff without an idea what we're going to get from it.

I think a team like ours, they need to be constantly reminded of how hard every game is. This isn't the old St. John's where you're up 25. Those days are behind us. They need to know that every team we play, whether it's Cincinnati, St. John's, it's going to be tough.

She felt like during the regular season there were times when she may have had opportunities to take over games and didn't. And now that her career's winding down, in this scenario she wanted the ball in her hands and she wasn't afraid to take big shots.

I thought Renee set the tone in the second half by how aggressive she was. She was looking to score and make a play every time down the floor.

There's some seniors that would be afraid to take that drive. You can't become great unless you're willing to suffer the consequences if it doesn't go in. You've just got to know it's going in.

Its just so overwhelming because as a kid you go to the Hall of Fame, you look around and you read everything and you just never imagine seeing your picture or your stuff right there. It probably wont really, really hit me until induction weekend, when its going to be unbelievable probably.

That was one of the all-time favorites because we were accused of making the roof leak on purpose. We dont want to win by too much. Lets create a diversion, so we stop the game for an hour. ... yeah, its been a while.

One of the reasons why we want to play in this tournament when we're eligible is because it's usually a good field and you end up playing pretty good teams. You find out quickly early in the season where you stand. We're a lot better today than we were last week.

They were pretty aggressive and good defensively. They helped make us look pretty bad.

I was afraid of that. We came off some of the games we just had and we were feeling pretty good. We're playing a game where their No.1 player is hurt, and physically we're not 100 percent coming out of the road trip. You put all those things in the mix, it made for one lousy game.

When she's calm, she knows where she's going and we get her in the right spot. I don't think there's anyone in the country that I would trust to make a big shot more than her.

It wasn't an easy game. You never felt like we were running away from them. We're starting to get more contributions from more people. We scored 74 points without Mel Thomas. That's pretty good. I think our best basketball is still ahead of us.

I think it takes some of the luster off the regular season championship. Now, it doesn't carry as much weight as it used to. Some years, there are breaks in the schedule. Some years are tougher than normal. It's not conducive to having a regular season champion.

Just having that makes everybody else around you a lot better. So I'm looking forward to that. We haven't had that in a while. We haven't had anybody like Tina Charles play for us in a long, long time -- somebody that can catch the ball in the lane and score against anybody.

There's a lot of things that I can fix, and generally speaking, those things are about my team, ... I can fix anything that's wrong with my team. Some of the other nonsense that goes on, I can't fix. And when it comes time when that other nonsense comes to the point where it affects the way I can fix and help my team, then it's time for me to leave. When that time comes, I'll let you know.

We have won some big games on the road against some good teams, which has given the group the confidence that you need to play in these games. I dont know that we went in feeling like we were good enough to win this thing last year. I think maybe we thought we were, but Im not sure we really believed it.

(Turner) had an unbelievable night. There comes a point and time when you're a senior when you have to start to assert yourself. Usually those times are on the road.

Will (Crockett) had her own office in the training room for a couple years. She had her own locker. ... Now, she never goes in there.

I think there are a lot of teams that are going to make the NCAA tournament that are not as good as Texas. With their conference, they have a chance to play some really good teams and if they can knock off one or two of them . . .

If we play as well as we're capable of playing, we're going to win (tonight) regardless of what Rutgers does. If we don't play our 'A' or to the best of our ability, then there's a pretty good chance that if Rutgers plays well we're going to lose. And that's the way it should be when you play against a really good team. But, you know what We're home. We're in our building. And the expectation level is we're going to win. That's the bottom line.

This one just happened to make it to the newspapers, ... I can't tell you how many times I have been offered jobs in that league that no one ever knew about.

We were closer to Let's be professional and knock it out,' ... That bodes well, because there's a lot that I'm expecting from them, maturity-wise and being able to handle adversity a little bit better. I think circumstances will have to present themselves, and we'll judge for ourselves whether we've made that jump.

We're incorrigible. All those threes, we were in a really bad zone. Mentally in a bad zone and a bad zone defense. I think we looked a little tired. Except when we had the ball. We didn't look tired when we had the ball offensively.

We're not a great free throw shooting team but the fact that we could make that many free throws here when we had to make them, I think that's a great sign for our guys.

You think about playing in the NCAA tournament and playing at this level, there'd be a lot more energy in the crowd and that's not the case. You have to bring your own, and it's not what you would expect at this time of year.

I thought we executed the game pretty well for thirty-some minutes. This is as much as a complete game as we've had in a really long time.

I've been in their situation enough times where you come in and you feel like you've got every answer to every question that comes up. And you know the only way you can lose is if you don't play to your ability. I'm sure Duke feels the same way. (Duke) plays in a manner that leads you to believe they're going to win a national championship.

I thought we ran a little. I thought we got out in transition pretty well. I'd like to see us do more of that. That's when we're at our best.

I think that fear factor stuff is gone. I just don't think anybody in the country is afraid of anybody anymore. Teams just think they can walk in any building and win any game.

So, yeah, I'm going to try to win the national championship next year. But I'm not going to kill myself doing it. I'm not going to kill my players either. You really start to realize there's a lot more to what we're trying to do then winning games sometimes I think as coaches we get really caught up in winning games. Now that I look back, I'm going to try to take a different spin on it, and try to look at things differently.

I keep thinking that it's going to work out. I keep holding out hope that it's going to work out.

You can't just run plays against a good defensive team. You've got to make them. We let one (bad) play lead to another and another and another ... until it just got completely away from us.

I'd like to be able to dial it up when we needed it. Unfortunately, sometimes you keep waiting and waiting and it never happens. My hope is that some time in the next 24 hours we play as close to our ability as we can. Right now, I think we need to play one of the best games that we've played. I don't know where we are in terms of that, but I'd like to see us come close to that (tonight).

Your philosophy in basketball will get you to a certain point. After that, you need individuals to take you to the next step.

We're quite unpredictable. I think the kids understand that. We go five possessions where we look really good, and then we go five where the kids on the bench go, 'What was that' We're still getting there. We're not there yet.

Probably another week and a half, (the trainers) said. That's the word that I got, another week and a half. They don't want to rush her back. She did it once. She hurried up to get back on the court because she's been out for so long.