Geno: Winning title made staying 'all worthwhile'

TAMPA, Fla. -- UConn coach Geno Auriemma joked about being the oldest coach to win a Division I basketball title, women's or men's, after the Huskies got the program's 12th on Sunday.

"Well, all those other coaches had the good sense to not stick around until they were 71," Auriemma said after an 82-59 win over South Carolina at Amalie Arena.

He also won his 10th championship in this venue, in 2015. Then, the Huskies won again in 2016 in Indianapolis for a fourth straight title, ending Breanna Stewart's amazing UConn career.

"There was a big part of my inner circle of people that I trust that were hoping that after the Stewie fourth in a row that I should have called it a day back then," Auriemma said. "That would have been apropos, I guess -- ride off into the sunset.

"But ... you make the decision you're not finished yet, and then three, four years go by, and people start telling you that UConn is not UConn anymore and it's somebody else's turn. And then five years go by, and six years go by, and seven years go by."

In all, eight years and seven NCAA tournaments passed (the 2020 tournament was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic) between the end of Stewart's reign and Sunday's championship. During that time, UConn still got to the Final Four every year but one (2023, when Paige Bueckers was out because of a knee injury) but the championships went to South Carolina (3), Notre Dame, Baylor, Stanford and LSU.

Along with Bueckers' injury in 2022-23, guard Azzi Fudd missed all but two games last season because of a knee injury, and the Huskies dealt with several other serious injuries to key players. UConn was not at full strength for the past three postseasons.

"For us, it always seemed like, if we ever got a chance to get healthy, this could be pretty good," Auriemma said.

That was the case Sunday, as the Huskies beat their third No. 1 seed in this tournament. UConn won its two Final Four games by a combined 57 points. Bueckers, Fudd and freshman Sarah Strong made the all-tournament team with Fudd as the Final Four's most outstanding player. The trio scored 65 points against South Carolina and 57 against UCLA in the semifinals.

For Auriemma, the all-time winningest coach in college basketball (1,250-165), this was his 24th Final Four and he is now 12-1 in championship games. The only loss came in 2022 to South Carolina.

Auriemma's birthday is in March; he was 71 years, 14 days old Sunday. The previous oldest coach to win the women's title was Stanford's Tara VanDerveer in 2021, when she was 67 years, 282 days. The oldest to win the men's title is also from UConn: Jim Calhoun, who was 68 years, 329 days when the Huskies won in 2011.

Auriemma half-seriously said Saturday that he thought about retiring multiple times a season over the past few years, but always found reasons to stay.

"We all feel our age at some point," he said. "We don't like to admit that we're older because we still act younger because of the people that we're dealing with. A lot of my friends that are my age that haven't done what I've done with who I've done it with ... they look way older, act way older because they've lost the ability to be a kid because they're not around kids.

"So, yeah, I may be 71 number-wise, but I think otherwise I'm more able to do stuff with those young people because I'm around them every day and they rub off on me. Does that mean I can do this for another X number of years? No, because, you know, wine is good for you, too, and if you're around it all the time, after a while, you wake up and you go, 'That was really bad, I had too much fun.'

"So these kids are fun. But there is going to come a time when the fun doesn't eliminate how hard it is to do this job. This job is really hard to do."

For now, though, it sounds like Auriemma is willing to spend more time where he has been since taking over the UConn program in 1985. He credits the players for that.

"When I tell you it's really out of your hands, it really is true," he said. "All of this is in the hands of the players who are playing. And they made it all worthwhile today."