With great success comes great expectations, which UConn head coach Geno Auriemma is learning after a bit of a drought in national titles lately.
It’s laughable to downplay any part of Auriemma’s coaching career, but the last eight years represent the only stretch of longer than six years without the Husky women’s team winning a national title under his watch. They won their last in 2016, the program’s fourth in a row at the time, but have since struck out.
It’s not like the wheels are falling off, though. UConn was in the Final Four this season and has made it in six of the last seven NCAA Tournaments, despite not cutting down the nets during that span. For a program and coach that demands titles, it’s a tough run of luck.
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But Geno Auriemma believes any disappointment is ridiculous. After all, the only reason national titles are the expectation is because he built a dynasty.
“Well, the expectations at UConn are what they are because we created them,” he said after the Iowa loss when asked about coming up short of expectations recently. “Somebody didn’t walk into our building and say, ‘Okay, this is what’s expected of you.’ We put that on ourselves now for the last 30 years.”
He’s certainly not happy with the idea his teams are turning in disappointing results.
“What pisses me off is the minute we don’t win a national championship for a couple of years, people think that our program now is less worthy of some others that have done it twice or have gone to the Final Four three out of the last four years.
“So I think it’s more rewarding on my end, not just to win a national championship — obviously you want to win a national championship every year — but people should talk about their own accomplishments instead of talking about what we’re not accomplishing. That seems to be the big story.”
Fiery stuff from the longtime Huskies’ head coach, who then compared UConn to Tiger Woods in that it’s a bigger surprise when they don’t win titles.
“I said this a long time ago. The only story is, like, when Tiger was at the height of his career, the only story on every Sunday was he didn’t win. Nobody cared who did win. And now people always wanted it to be, like, well, can we celebrate other people? Okay. Celebrate them. Stop talking about us when we don’t win a national championship.”
Auriemma does realize, though, that whether the coverage is positive or negative, you do want to have that attention, because that means you’re still in the mix as one of the powerhouse teams.
“But, again, that’s the world we created. And we might not win a national championship, but we’re right there when it’s usually being decided — and that’s all that matters.”
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