Geno Auriemma entered elite company Wednesday night, earning his 1,200th career win when his Connecticut Huskies beat Seton Hall 67-34 in a Big East women's basketball matchup in Hartford, Connecticut.
The victory makes Auriemma, 69, just the third coach in the history of NCAA college basketball – men's or women's – to reach 1,200 wins and comes exactly one month to the day that another legend, Stanford women's basketball coach Tara VanDerveer, reached the milestone. Two weeks later, VanDerveer would earn win 1,203 to break former Duke and Army coach Mike Krzyzewski's all-time record.
Now, in his 39th season, Auriemma, a 2006 inductee to both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, stands alongside the two titans, though his bona fides have long been established after coaching a long list of All-Americans and leading UConn to a record 11 NCAA women's basketball national championships.
"I'm sure if you asked coach when he started and you said, 'Forty years later you'll have 11 national championships, 1,200 wins,' he wouldn't believe it," Diana Taurasi, a three-time All-American and three-time national champion at Connecticut, told CT Insider.
"What he's doing is unheard of and will never happen again," the five-time Olympic gold medalist, continued. "I mean, you'll never find someone that will stay at one place that long. It doesn't happen anymore and it will never be done again."
After hitting the milestone, Auriemma reflected on UConn's journey to becoming a college basketball powerhouse and said he was "proud" of what the program has become.
"We helped make something happen that never existed and no one ever thought it could happen," Auriemma said.
He also suggested his coaching career could be nearing an end, saying he won't be adding hundreds of more wins, but "more along the line of single digits."
"I could probably say, with a great deal of certainty, that I'll never be number one in wins, I don't think that will happen," Auriemma said. "And I'm still going to enjoy my wine and I'm going to sleep good tonight."
Here are some of the biggest accomplishments of Auriemma's career.
Auriemma became the third coach in NCAA basketball history and the second active coach to earn 1,200 wins. Here are the five winningest college basketball coaches across all NCAA divisions, with three coaching women's teams and two coaching men's:
*Former Syracuse men's coach Jim Boeheim had 1,116 wins before 101 were vacated by the NCAA. His total now stands at 1,015.
Auriemma has compiled the best winning percentage in Division I women's basketball history, winning 88% of the games he has coached.
Auriemma has raised more national championship trophies than any other men's or women's basketball coach in NCAA Division I history. When Auriemma led the Huskies to their 11th title – and fourth in a row – in 2016, he broke the longstanding record of UCLA men's coach John Wooden.
Auriemma stands alone when it comes to the Final Four as the only coach to lead a team to the NCAA tournament's final weekend at least 20 times:
Contributing: Associated Press
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