Geno's Game

His name is Geno Auriemma, and the name of his game is women's basketball.

Not so long ago, the sport was little more than an indulgence in the big-time industry of college sports, and Auriemma was just another anonymous assistant coach working his way up the minor league basketball ladder.

Then 18 years ago, he received a modest offer from a backwater team in a backwater school: UConn, or the University of Connecticut. Now, there are few teams better at the game than the UConn Huskies, the four-time and current national champions. Correspondent Morley Safer reports.

He is the Geno Show -- a whale in what was the puddle of women's basketball. He's brought four national championships, and millions of dollars in revenue to a mid-size state university that seldom made the headlines.

The Connecticut women's basketball team has built a virtual cult following among these otherwise undemonstrative Swamp Yankees. Every game is a sellout: 16,000 rabid Husky fanatics under one roof.

The unrelenting daily drills are a hallmark of Auriemma's basketball program. There's not a trace of sensitivity in evidence. And sarcasm and impatience take the place of gender awareness.

"You're very tough on the players," Safer tells Auriemma. "To what extent is that, in itself, an act?"

"It's not an act. Because if it was an act, I think they'd read through it. So it's real. It is absolutely, positively real," says Auriemma.

"Players and people break down mentally before they break down physically, I believe. So you're not just training them to run and jump and do -- you're training them hopefully to think under pressure."

And to do that, you must practice a certain kind of chauvinist psychology.

"I think women at this level, and women in general, I think, have this burning desire to please. Like I want to do what you want me to do," says Auriemma. "Like if you, coach, you want me to do this. I really want to do that. So, if you tell me I didn't do it well enough, it bothers them, personally."

Auriemma looks for the best high school athletes who can take his verbal assaults. In the fiercely competitive game of college recruiting, he plays the choreographer of a chorus line.

"I've tried to use the Broadway analogy, with a lot of kids. You're a performer. And in women's basketball, this has become Broadway," says Auriemma. "It's where the most fans are, and the most attention. So, why would you want to ply your trade anywhere else other than Broadway?"

Why do other coaches tell them they shouldn't come here? "Don't play for that guy, he's a jerk," says Auriemma.

So why is he the coach that everyone loves to hate? "Because we win all the time, among other things" says Auriemma. "I'm not exactly the right face that you would wanna put on women's basketball."

"He plays the villain. He says things which he knows are gonna irritate the women's coaches that he knows don't like him," says Sports Illustrated writer and UConn fan Frank Deford.

He says Auriemma is not exactly a poster boy for women's basketball: "This good-looking, sharp, Daddy-O, you know, with the curly -- the whole bit? There's no way that they're gonna bring him in."

And Deford says Auriemma plays his role to the hilt.

"He starts with the tie untied, you know? Loose. But perfectly untied, loose. As if he'd had a valet come in and do that ahead of time. That's part of it. The hands on the hips, this kind of pose. The walking up and down. Screaming and then the assistant coaches will come in," says Deford.

"It's almost choreographed like wrestling, you know? He's got the act down pat. And he's the only guy out there. Usually he's the only guy. He's this one man in this sea of femininity."

How did he learn English? "Pretend. I learned through sports. You hang out with the kids in the playground. You pick it up quickly," says Auriemma.

"I was taught a valuable lesson in grade school by the nuns, and the teachers at my grade school. They said, 'Look. In June, the kids that are really smart go on to third grade. The kids that are not stay in second grade.' And my aunt interpreted for me. And she said, 'You understand?' I said, 'Absolutely.' There was no English as a second language. There was no 'stay after school and we'll work with you.' You either get it or you try again next year."

Does he try to run his team the way the nuns ran him and the school?

"I try to run it like you would, if you had 12 kids. And you say, 'All right. Now, do I just let it go, like, whatever happens happens? Or do I have certain rules and regulations that everyone can agree on, would make this thing work,'" says Auriemma. "And I think that's how we do it. Some of `em, the kids don't agree with in the beginning. That, they eventually come to appreciate."

Auriemma treats his stars, like senior Diana Taurasi, no differently than anyone else. Does he understand women?

"He does. And you know, we always say he's probably a woman, too. He's got mood swings like a woman, too. You know, he's got a little 'girl' in him, I guess. But Coach, he does understand women. He understands what gets under them the most. Like, I think that's what helps him the most," says Taurasi.

"He gets in your head. He knows how to. He knows what buttons to push to get what he wants from his players and sometimes you don't like it."

"The line that a coach has to walk is: Does your team right now need to be inflated, individually and collectively, even if it's artificially? Or does your team need to be told the truth and knocked down?" says Auriemma.

"And sometimes you say something to a player, and today you're right, and you say the same thing tomorrow, and tomorrow you're wrong. I mean, we're talking 12 women here. So I mean, you could be right at 11 o'clock in the morning and be wrong at 12:30 in the afternoon."

"Lazy asses. We are lazy mentally. I've been saying that for three months," says Auriemma at the game. "We are lazy and it's showing up right now."

With only 5 seconds left, Duke had fought back and tied the game. Then Taurasi put her team them back up by 2 points. But it was too late. Duke hit the basketball equivalent of a grand slam home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. At the final buzzer, a three pointer. And total shock.
"It's unexplainable, really. In some ways, it's so easy to explain, but in other ways, it's unexplainable," said Auriemma at the post game press conference. "There's no way to explain it. I've never seen anything like it."

And a week later, it happened again. Another loss, this time to Notre Dame.

It's not just pressure on Auriemma and the team to win -- it's to win every time, and never lose.

That's tough stuff.

"He has created a monster in which people expect UConn to win every game. And not only to win every game. They expect it to win every game by 20 or 30 points," says Deford.

"I mean, when they have close games and only win by 10 or 12, you know, the people in Connecticut are saying, 'What happened last night? What's the matter? Are they losing it?' And so when they lose a game, it's like the universe has been turned upside down."

"It happened in 1999. In 1999, we had a lousy year. We were 29 and 5," says Auriemma. "Now you're laughing. Everybody was devastated."

How does Auriemma deal with expectations of perfection with every game? "It drives me crazy. But that's how I am. I'm kind of a tortured soul here," says Auriemma. "So I just deal with it, with 'OK, That's why I get paid a lotta money. We're going to win every game.' And you keep your fingers crossed."

For a while, it's very close. But then, the Geno Show took over, and his Huskies ran away with the win.

How much of a win is in the head?

"All of it," says Auriemma. "First, you win the game in your head. Then you win it on the court with your body. First, you see it, then you do it. So Yogi was right. Ninety percent of the game is half-mental."