Geno Auriemma is on the cusp of making history, about to set the record for career victories as a college basketball coach. Down the hall at the Werth Family Center, UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley is also on the trail of history.
One coach sizing up another, Hurley had this to say about Auriemma’s inevitable 1,217th victory, which would be one more than Tara VanDerveer, former Stanford women’s coach, and 15 more than Mike Krzyzewski, former Duke men’s coach:
“I just hope people don’t take it for granted,” Hurley told reporters in Storrs on Monday. “Like, he’s one of the unique coaches in sports. All of sports, To have that type of longevity and excellence and to win at that level, produce players at that level, who’ve won WNBA championships.”
The UConn women play FDU on Wednesday night at Gampel Pavilion, a celebration of Auriemma’s and associate head coach Chris Dailey’s 40 years in Storrs, with anticipation of the record breaker.
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Hurley, 51, came to UConn in 2018 and he and Auriemma have enjoyed a warm relationship. Their teams shared a plane to Portland for the Phil Knight even in November 2022, and Auriemma was maybe the first to predict, so early in the season, that the UConn men were good enough to win the championship.
Hurley, now with back-to-back championships, is certain to join Auriemma and Jim Calhoun in the Naismith Hall of Fame one day, but he has often said he considers his coaching career “a sprint.” He doesn’t expect to last as long as Auriemma, 70, in his 40th season.
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“Every day for how many years? 40. Just the endurance that that takes and the sense of purpose,” Hurley said. “And obviously the intelligence and consistently telling himself to improve and to stay at his level. And then you get to know him personally. I couldn’t even (begin to tell you) the amount of help he’s provided to me and the staff since I’ve been on the job here and how he goes out of is way to be supportive and helpful, and the opportunity he gives you to learn from him as a leader. You would expect a guy like Geno to be just be a guy with a big ego, but he’s really not like that.
“I really didn’t know him before I got here, then I met him and he’s the best guy ever, beside (being on the) Mount Rushmore of basketball coaches.”
Hurley is trying to lead the UConn men to a third straight championship, something that hasn’t been done in men’s basketball since UCLA in the late 1960s and early 70s. Auriemma’s women’s teams won four in a row ending in 2016, the most recent of his 11 championships.
Earlier in his career, Auriemma chased, and broke a record set by those John Wooden-coached UCLA teams, who won 88 games in a row. Under Auriemma, the UConn women have had winning streaks of 90 and 111.
“I went over and I would watch practice, watch him with the media, watch him at events with donors,” Hurley said. “When I came, and I am still rough around the edges, still who I am, don’t have that level polish. I’ve picked up, I think, on his leadership qualities, how he handles his players, I learn from watching him play, just how how he moves.”
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When the UConn men lost in the Big East tournament in March 2023, Auriemma texted Hurley, who was riding the bus home, advising he not watch the tape, just flush the game, and reminded him that there were years when the women lost in the conference tournament and went on to win the national championship.
“I’ll ask him things,” Hurley said, “because he watches all our games and I watch all his games. I’ll ask, I don’t always have to wait for a text.”
