Geno Auriemma biography
Geno Auriemma, byname of Luigi Auriemma, (born March 23, 1954, Montella, Italy), Italian-born American basketball coach who led the University of Connecticut ladies’s group to a document 11 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) nationwide championships between 1995 and 2016 and to an unprecedented six undefeated seasons.
Auriemma’s household immigrated to Norristown, Pennsylvania, when he was seven years previous. While attending West Chester State College (now West Chester University of Pennsylvania), Auriemma took an assistant coach place with the ladies’s group at St. Joseph’s University in close by Philadelphia. After graduating in 1981, Auriemma joined the teaching workers on the University of Virginia. In 1985—with no earlier head teaching expertise—he was employed because the Connecticut head coach. He shortly remade Connecticut, which had only one successful season in its historical past earlier than Auriemma took over, into one of many premier packages within the nation. After posting a 12–15 document in his first 12 months with the Huskies, Auriemma led the group to successful data in every successive season of his tenure.
Auriemma guided the Huskies to a Big East Conference championship in his fourth season and to the Final Four of the NCAA championship event in his sixth. In the 1994–95 season Connecticut gained every of its 35 video games and captured its first nationwide championship. The Huskies defeated the University of Tennessee within the championship recreation, which marked the start of a long-running rivalry between the 2 colleges and between Auriemma and Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt particularly. Connecticut gained a second title in 1999–2000, and in 2001–02 the group posted one other undefeated season and captured the primary of three consecutive NCAA championships. The Huskies went 39–0 throughout the 2008–09 season to convey their championship whole to 6 below Auriemma. Connecticut matched that end result the next season to win one other title and within the course of broke its personal document (established between 2001 and 2003) for many consecutive victories, when the group gained its 71st straight recreation in March 2010; the group’s successful streak finally ended at 90 video games in December.
The Huskies misplaced within the NCAA event Final Four (championship semifinals) in each 2010–11 and 2011–12. Auriemma led Connecticut to a different nationwide championship in 2012–13, which established a document for many consecutive Final Fours for a ladies’s program (six) and tied Auriemma with Summitt for probably the most top-division ladies’s basketball nationwide championships of all time (eight). The following season he broke Summitt’s document as Connecticut captured its ninth title below his steering. Moreover, he led the group to an ideal 40–0 document in 2013–14, extending his document for undefeated seasons and establishing a brand new college document for wins in a season. The Huskies misplaced only one recreation the next season en path to a tenth nationwide title, which tied Auriemma with John Wooden—whose UCLA males’s groups gained 10 titles between 1964 and 1975—for probably the most NCAA basketball championships as a head coach. He broke Wooden’s championship document the next 12 months as Connecticut reeled off one other undefeated season (38–0) in 2015–16, successful each contest by at the least 10 factors. The seniors on that group turned the primary basketball gamers in NCAA historical past to seize 4 titles throughout their careers (the gamers on Wooden’s groups weren't eligible to play as freshmen). In February 2017 Connecticut turned the primary group in NCAA historical past to win 100 straight video games, a document for each ladies’s and males’s packages. The group’s streak ended at 111 video games as Connecticut was upset within the 2017 nationwide semifinals when Mississippi State made a dramatic buzzer-beating shot in time beyond regulation. Connecticut once more superior to the nationwide semifinals with an undefeated document in 2018 however as soon as extra misplaced on a shocking last-second time beyond regulation shot, this time to eventual champion Notre Dame.