UConn coach Geno Auriemma is a victory away from 1,000 for his coaching career. But he has influenced a great many more victories even beyond the Huskies.
Tuesday, UConn takes on Oklahoma at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Barring a big upset, that's when and where No. 1,000 will come. The top-ranked Huskies have defeated the Sooners in all 10 of their meetings, including the 2002 NCAA final.
But Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve knows a team that has a perfect record against UConn: LaSalle.
Reeve gets a kick out of periodically mentioning that to her former UConn players like Maya Moore. Indeed, LaSalle is 4-0 against the Huskies, albeit all coming in the 1980s. Three of those victories were when Reeve either played or was a graduate assistant at the school. The first victory predated both Auriemma and Reeve.
Reeve -- who has led the Lynx to four WNBA titles -- is a perfect person to ask about how much Auriemma has impacted women's basketball at every level: college, the WNBA and international play. She has been involved in the WNBA since 2001, and has drafted and coached UConn players. Plus, she was an assistant to Auriemma with the U.S. national team.
"I get a chance to watch practices and shootarounds around the country," Reeve said. "What strikes me is his method of demanding the very best, the attention to detail, the pace of play. It all absolutely prepares his players for anything, including pro basketball."
The Auriemma influence doesn't go away when the players leave UConn. Reeve said it's her experience -- and this definitely is the case with Moore -- that former Huskies want to be critiqued without any punches pulled. They respond well to that, even long after their college days.
"While in the moment they may not want to hear it, at the end of the day, it's what they want," Reeve said. "And when they don't have it, they feel like they're falling short. When they move on from UConn and Geno, those days of being pushed hard is what they crave."
Getting to 1,000 victories says a lot about a coach's longevity, obviously. But understanding how vast Auriemma's footprint is in women's basketball puts that number in another kind of perspective. It's one thing to have so much success with what you're directly controlling. It's something more to see that spread as far as it has with Auriemma.
Consider this: Over the past 15 seasons of the WNBA, 11 of the championship teams had at least one former UConn player who played a pivotal role. The last time an Olympic team didn't have a UConn player was 1992. No college coach except the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee has had such a sustained influence on the U.S. national team and the pro game.
Auriemma developed a philosophy he wanted to implement once he took over a college program. UConn -- which had lost more than it had won before he arrived in 1985 -- was his first test case. It ended up being his life's work.
Why has it worked? Reeve pointed out Auriemma's ability to teach players not so much how to run plays but how to play.
There's an oft-repeated saying that the Huskies practice not until they get something right, but until they can't get it wrong. There's truth to that, but it might be misconstrued as meaning that UConn succeeds offensively because of highly choreographed, pinpoint-precise plays that must be run exactly the same each time.
On the contrary, UConn's precision is in the execution of concepts: how to make cuts, how to pass, how to find holes in defenses. Even though they understand well what they are doing, the Huskies are able to keep defenses guessing.
"What's important is not really what he's running, it's the way they do it," Reeve said. "Let's say they are going to install a set. Whatever it is, Geno wants to make sure his team is unpredictable for the defense. He teaches them to keep cutting and moving. That's the beauty of their offense when you watch it.
"That's like with Maya -- she can be unguardable because you don't know what she's going to do. That's a UConn thing. They are taught how -- even when somebody is taking something away -- to continue to play in a flow. That's of paramount importance to him. The fluid motion you see isn't about him scripting every movement. It's about him training them to move with great pace and demanding they do it."
"They are taught how -- even when somebody is taking something away -- to continue to play in a flow. ... The fluid motion you see isn't about him scripting every movement. It's about him training them to move with great pace." Cheryl Reeve on how coach Geno Auriemma prepares his Huskies
Auriemma's work with pro players during his time with the U.S. national team -- in 2000 as an assistant to Nell Fortner, and in 2012 and '16 as head coach -- was invigorating for him even when it sometimes has frustrated him. The WNBA's heavy reliance on the pick-and-roll doesn't necessarily appeal to how Auriemma thinks an offense should look; it can seem too simplistic and stagnant to him.
But he has benefited from the direct interaction with the pros, and vice versa. South Carolina's Dawn Staley, who's now the national team coach, has said that Auriemma challenged the way some pro players approached the game back in 2000, when he was a U.S. assistant and she was still playing.
Staley said that Auriemma was "ahead of the curve" and that the players who actually listened to what he was saying took something from it.
Of course, UConn's 999 victories aren't related only to how well Auriemma has taught players to think about offense. The Huskies are just as good defensively -- being in the right position is essential, and why UConn is so good at avoiding foul trouble -- and that also impacts the success they have professionally.
One of the best and most recent examples is the Seattle Storm's Breanna Stewart, who was a candidate for MVP and Defensive Player of the Year even as a rookie in 2016. Sure, it helps a lot to be a long-limbed, agile, 6-foot-4 presence, but playing at UConn got Stewart ready to step right in and be effective at the pro level.
"That's why [in the WNBA] we're glad to have a UConn player. Because you know when you get them, they're equipped to play," Reeve said.
That's attributed not just to Auriemma, but to how on point and on message his entire staff is. He'd be the first to say associate head coach Chris Dailey has built and maintained the UConn dynasty as much as he has since he arrived in Storrs. If something does somehow get past him, it's not going to also get past Dailey or assistants Shea Ralph and Marisa Moseley.
That drive to keep pushing, to not settle for "good enough," to insist on the game looking the way he wants it to look -- none of that lets up in Auriemma. Neither he nor the program is showing any signs of relaxing, even with 11 championships.
"Each year you're successful, you have that moment where you let out a sigh and say, 'OK, that was hard, but we did it,'" Reeve said. "Then you have to get geared up for the next one. And this is something he's done for over 30 years.
"To always have a chance at winning a championship for as long as he has, to do it over and over, is so impressive. Watching what he's doing is something we're getting to experience that's maybe a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Who knows when that will ever come along again."