Geno Auriemma’s Philly-area roots shine through in new UConn women’s basketball documentary
The 72-year-old got his start coaching girls' basketball in the Philadelphia Catholic League, as a new Apple TV series helps document.
Connecticut women’s basketball in the 21st century has been synonymous with dominance, and the central figure to it all has been Norristown native Geno Auriemma.
The 72-year-old coach, who took his current job ahead of the 1985 season, has spent more than four decades on the sideline and built the Huskies into one of the most dominant and storied programs in college basketball history.
Last week, a three-episode documentary called The Dynasty: UConn Huskies aired on Apple TV, giving insight into Auriemma’s brash coaching style that has often received criticism but was a driving force to his 12 national titles.
And while it featured the many players past and present, from Swin Cash and Sue Bird to Diana Taurasi, Breanna Stewart, and even Paige Bueckers, Auriemma’s Philly roots were another theme of the coach’s historic run in women’s college basketball.
Here were some ways Philly was involved in Auriemma’s journey:
Auriemma’s motivation to coach girls’ basketball
The documentary tells the story of Auriemma and UConn chronologically, but stopped in both the first and second episodes to detail some of his back story. Auriemma told the story of how he first got involved with women’s basketball.
“When I was in school and playing basketball, coaching women would have been last on my list,” Auriemma says. “But my buddy, he comes up to me one day and he says, ‘Hey, I started coaching girls’ high school basketball. I need an assistant coach.’ I said, ‘Who the hell would coach girls?’”
Auriemma later obliged, and while he didn’t say it on camera, that start came at Bishop McDevitt High School as the assistant girls’ varsity coach and head junior varsity coach. When he went to practice, he noted his own reluctance to provide hard coaching.
“It kind of dawned on me. They’re not going to crack. They’re not fragile,” said Auriemma. “That you can demand a lot from them. … But everything [in my career] just took off from there.”
He later took assistant coaching jobs at St. Joseph’s and Virginia, with Norristown’s Kennedy Kenrick Catholic High School (which closed in 1993) sandwiched in between. Auriemma took the UConn job in 1985 and has been there since.
Auriemma discussed his family moving from Montella, a small village in southern Italy, to Norristown when he was 7 years old. He recalled that his “mother can’t read or write, my father barely went to school,” and cited the challenges of not being able to “speak any English.”
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The differences in the clothes he wore and food he ate, compared to other kids, Auriemma said, made him “desperately wanting to be like an American kid.” It ultimately informed his approach as a coach.
“As I got older, I always felt like, ‘I’m not that guy.’ … You get reminded, but there was this part of me where if I can be really, really, really good and be better than you, then I can, I can prove that I belong in your group,” said Auriemma. “It’s just a little kid’s mentality, and unfortunately, it stayed with me 40 years into coaching that I have to prove that I’m better than anybody else at doing what I do, but I need to be better than you.”
UConn-Tennessee rivalry
Auriemma’s breakthrough as a coach was beating Pat Summit and her Tennessee squad in the national championship game in 1995. But afterward, Summit won three national titles in a row and reclaimed the Lady Vols’ status as women’s basketball’s elite program.
That all changed in the 2000 NCAA Tournament championship game, though. After a disappointing Sweet 16 loss with their hyped freshman recruiting class that included Bird, Cash, Asjha Jones, and Tamika Williams, UConn came roaring back and was set to face Tennessee in Philadelphia at the First Union Center (now called Xfinity Mobile Arena).
He also further ignited his rivalry with Summit with some of his pregame comments about cheesesteaks.
“Geno was doing an interview about cheesesteak, obviously Geno’s, and one is Pat’s across the street in Philly, and he made a comparison. Geno’s was new and forthcoming. Pat’s was old and dilapidated,” recalled Mickie DeMoss, a longtime assistant under Summit at Tennessee. “I mean, at that point we had won six, and he’d won one. So I’m not sure where he got Pat was old and dilapidated.”
The interaction underscored the heated and competitive relationship between Summit and Auriemma, and the rivalry that had been brewing for five years. Auriemma wanted to ensure his team came out on top in his hometown that season.
“Lots of people are great. But that night in Philly, I wanted to make sure that everybody knew we’re the best in the country. I mean, everyone,” said Auriemma. “They’re all people I grew up with. They’re all kids I grew up with. So being surrounded by all that and family, yeah, the desire to win, I want that so bad. I’ll do anything to get it.”
And he did, emphatically. UConn rolled Tennessee, 71-52, for Auriemma’s second title and what set off a dominant 17-year stretch in which the Huskies won 11 national titles before Philly’s Dawn Staley and South Carolina took center stage in the current era of women’s college basketball.
Auriemma’s latest title in 2024 was featured to close the documentary, with Bueckers’ difficult journey and rocky relationship with the longtime coach culminating in a win over Staley’s South Carolina.
This season, which will be the 41st for Auriemma, UConn will face Staley’s Gamecocks on Nov. 24 at Mohegan Sun Arena, home of the Connecticut Sun, for the first time since Auriemma’s outburst in the final seconds of their Final Four matchup last season. The game is part of a doubleheader for the Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase. St. John’s will face UCLA in the other game.
