Coach

[FanFromMaine]

One of the unusual aspects of this crazy season is Geno's message to Paige to shoot early and often. At first, I was mystified by this as UConn players are rarely in the running for scoring leader. Then I saw the the obvious reasoning: her points are sorely needed by this team.

Only one other coach I can remember made such a drastic realignment from one season to the next: John Wooden. Before Lew Alcindor arrived, Wooden coached small, quick pressing teams which had become very successful. Enter Abdul Jabbar and the offense flows through him. Obviously he was a unique talent but I give John Wooden a lot of credit for leaving the kind of ball he had been playing since his days in Indiana.

To me, very few individuals, let alone coaches, have the confidence to what Wooden and now Auriemma did.

 

[MSGRET]

To this day I wished that Wooden would have taken the offer from Purdue to be the assistant coach for a year, then become the head coach. I still remember my father telling me that he turned the offer down because Wooden didn't want to make the current head coach a lame duck coach. He was a gentleman first, then a head coach, such a rarity in the field of coaching.

 

[UcMiami]

To this day I wished that Wooden would have taken the offer from Purdue to be the assistant coach for a year, then become the head coach. I still remember my father telling me that he turned the offer down because Wooden didn't want to make the current head coach a lame duck coach. He was a gentleman first, then a head coach, such a rarity in the field of coaching.

But would Purdue have had the deep pocket boosters that helped Wooden get all that talent? The legend might have been stillborn.