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Having been raised in the small town of Norristown, just outside Philadelphia, UConn women’s head basketball coach Geno Auriemma knows how the underdog Villanova men’s basketball team won the national title in 1985.
The Villanova coach at the time, Rollie Massimino, was so upset with his team in a regular late-season loss at Pittsburgh, that he benched his entire starting team for the second half. Auriemma took a page out of that book and benched his two best players for all but the first five minutes of a win at Memphis in the Huskies’ last game.
Consider the message received as No. 2 and host UConn beat No. 1 South Carolina (22-1), 87-62, in probably the most important women’s regular-season basketball game in years. All coaches in all sports would do well to copy Auriemma, just like he copied Massimino. Auriemma has three of the best front-court players in women’s basketball in Morgan Tuck, Kiah Stokes and Breanna Stewart, but he had no hesitation to bench both when Memphis had a 12-10 lead.
Stewart finished with 21 points and Tuck with 17 and both appeared extremely motivated by Auriemma’s benching. It is all part of the Auriemma Magic that has led to 900 wins. Only Tennessee’s Pat Summitt has more wins. More impressively, by beating South Carolina, Auriemma is now 17-3 in games between No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams.
Now UConn is 23-1 but its big-game performances make it the team to beat in the NCAA Tournament again and no one was more responsible for that than the master motivator, Auriemma.
Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
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