Geno Auriemma spent a couple of hours at the University of Connecticut’s practice center Sunday overseeing drills, teaching half-court sets, encouraging players and pointing out mistakes. He was in his element. At one point during a scrimmage, he noticed a defensive error.
“Switch those!” Auriemma screamed. “Switch those screens.”
Throughout his tenure of nearly 31 years as UConn’s women’s basketball coach, Auriemma has probably said those words thousands of times. But instead of yelling at the Huskies, he was making sure the USA Basketball women’s national team was on top of its game.
Sixteen of the best female players in the United States had convened at UConn for a final, three-day training camp before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August. USA Basketball is considering 25 players for the 12-person roster, including 10 who were members of the 2012 Olympic gold medal team.
For Auriemma and UConn forward Breanna Stewart, the timing of the camp was not perfect. The top-ranked Huskies (26-0) have three regular-season games remaining and are aiming to win a fourth consecutive NCAA tournament championship, which would give them sole possession of a Division I record.
On Saturday evening, UConn defeated East Carolina, 84-41, on the road for its 63rd consecutive victory. Auriemma arrived home shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday, while Stewart did not arrive on campus until around 2 a.m. Less than nine hours later, she was on the court competing for a chance at her first Olympic appearance.
“It wasn’t terrible, but not the most ideal thing,” said Stewart, the youngest player on the 2014 FIBA world championship U.S. squad. “I have all day to recover and get ready for tomorrow.”
Auriemma, who has coached the women’s national team since 2009 and has never lost a game in international competition, scheduled practices with his UConn team Monday and Tuesday after the USA Basketball practices. Stewart, the only college player among the final 25 Olympic hopefuls, said she would practice with USA Basketball but would most likely sit out the UConn practices. The Huskies did not practice Sunday.
With the NCAA tournament starting next month and WNBA training camps opening in April, Auriemma said this was the best time to get enough players together before the Olympics because several were on break from their professional teams overseas and UConn would not play again until Wednesday. Auriemma said he had no trouble juggling his UConn and USA Basketball duties.
“It’s not like during the season I’m torn or I’m distracted,” Auriemma said. “It’s been really good for me, because for five months, I’ve got UConn, and then during the summer, I’ve got USA Basketball.”
Coaching the national team also provides Auriemma with an opportunity to reunite with former Huskies. Former UConn stars Sue Bird, Stefanie Dolson, Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi are competing in this week’s training camp. Former UConn forward Tina Charles, a member of the 2012 Olympic team, could not participate because she was playing in China, but she is likely to be on this year’s Olympic team.
UConn’s practice center, which opened in 2014, is a monument to the Huskies’ dominance over the past two decades. The walls feature banners from UConn’s 10 national championships (all of which have come since 1995), eight national players of the year (including Bird, Taurasi, Charles, Moore and Stewart), 10 other first-team all-Americans (including Dolson) and eight players (including Bird, Taurasi, Charles and Moore) who have won Olympic gold medals.
Stewart and the five former Huskies still in contention for the Olympic roster each played on undefeated national collegiate championship teams. Asked if they liked to give each other a hard time about which team was the best in program history, Taurasi said the players respected one another. But she added that none of the teams had topped the squad that went 31-4 and won the national title in 2004, her senior season.
“There’s really no argument,” she said, laughing. “We don’t really talk about it. We can talk about second.”
Taurasi and Bird, teammates on the unbeaten 2002 national championship squad, said they enjoyed being back on campus and seeing each other for the first time since summer. The two have played on the last three Olympic teams and are good friends.
“Whether it’s deaths in the families or winning championships — and then, of course, heartbreaking losses as well — we’ve experienced it together,” Bird said. “When it’s all said and done, the majority of my fond basketball memories will involve her, absolutely.”
Since the formation of the USA Basketball women’s national team in 1995, the United States has won five consecutive Olympic gold medals and 86 of 87 games in Olympic and FIBA competitions. Its only loss was to Russia, 75-68, in the 2006 FIBA world championship semifinals. The United States will be heavily favored to win another gold medal this summer.
First, though, Auriemma is concerned with winning his 11th NCAA tournament, which would break the record set by former UCLA men’s coach John Wooden for the most national titles for a Division I coach. UConn is leading Division I this season in scoring offense (88.6 points per game) and defense (48.3 points per game) and has victories over four of the top six teams in the country (Notre Dame, South Carolina, Ohio State and Maryland), each of them by at least 10 points.
On Sunday, Auriemma took a brief break from the all-consuming march for the record. It was a welcome respite.
“Getting together with these guys, it’s never difficult,” he said. “It’s never a chore. It’s always fun to look forward to. It’s fun to watch them play, let’s put it that way.”
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