“We have Diana Taurasi and you don’t”: Geno Auriemma remembers “offending” people and bearing the “arrogant” allegations after bold comment
Geno Auriemma is known by many for being one of the greatest coaches in basketball history. He is also known for being in headlines for comments he makes that "offend" people and have him seen as "arrogant."
Auriemma was featured in an interview that was uploaded to the "What Drives Winning" YouTube channel on December 8, which features "real conversations with top minds in sport centering around character development, priority alignment, team dynamics, behavior management, and self-awareness."
When talking about how to succeed as a coach, he called back to a time when he responded to a question regarding the secret to his success by saying he had Diana Taurasi on his team while the other didn't.
"When they said, 'What's the secret to your success?' One of them, and I said, Well, we have Diana Taurasi and you don't. And that became like a big thing. 'He's arrogant, arrogant.' I'm actually giving you a backhanded compliment," Geno Auriemma said.
"You call timeout, I call timeout. You talk to your team. I talk to my team, you're talking to some normal schmo that doesn't understand what you're talking about. I'm talking to Diana Taurasi. If you were talking to her and I was talking to your players, you would have won that game. That's what I was trying to say," explained Auriemma.
Geno Auriemma names the most important thing he had to unlearn
Geno Auriemma learned many lessons throughout the entirety of his coaching career in college basketball, especially with UConn. However, there were things he had to unlearn as time went on.
"That I could control the outcome of everything, that I could make a player into anything I wanted them to be, like you're around I'm going to beat you into being square so you can fit into the spot I need you to fit into. And I did that for a long time. I actually got pretty good at it, but I also realized I was ruining my view of what coaching is. Coaching isn't about that for me," Auriemma said.
"When I realized that I could only chop and dice and whatever, but that's not who they really were so I tried to make them fit into what I thought they needed them to be as opposed to, this is what I feel comfortable doing, Coach. Help me be the best doing it your way, but allow me to have some say in what I'm going to do," Auriemma added.
Geno Auriemma and No. 2 UConn are off to a 8-0 start this season, looking to improve to 9-0 when they face No. 8 Notre Dame at the Purcell Pavilion in South Bend, Indiana, on December 12 at 7 p.m. ET.