Geno's Philosophy Of The Tourney , Seedings & Tough Conferences

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You've seen him say it; reading it is fun too.

But if it was a choice to have a tournament with what were considered the top 64 teams or a tournament that included automatic qualifiers from mid-major and lower level conferences, UConn coach Geno Auriemma would choose the latter every time.

"I remember when we were that mid-major that was trying to figure out a way to make the NCAA tournament and actually be successful in the NCAA tournament," Auriemma said. "So I would never want to take that opportunity away from anyone. If you're playing in a league and you're a Division I program and your league has a championship and you win that championship, you should be able to compete for the national championship.

"That's the beauty of college basketball. This isn't like some of the other sports in college where it's predetermined who's going to be playing in the national championship based on your preseason ranking. This is actually earned on the court and everybody has a chance to win. And that's what makes our tournament exciting. You'd say, 'Well, those teams never win.' It doesn't matter if they win or don't win. They have the opportunity to win and that is basically what this is all about.

"Denying teams the opportunity ... And I don't want to hear anymore about this, 'We were 18-12 but we played in a really tough league.' Well, obviously, that league was too tough for you. You should have been better. This isn't about we played in a great league and we finished eighth, ninth, or 10th. That makes you better than some team that won the championship in another league? We're going to find out, aren't we? You're going to have to play one of those teams. So prove it. I like that."

Huskies at starting line for NCAA tournament run

 

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And a better insight into fairness


What Auriemma would like to see from the one-bid conferences is have their regular season champion, not the tournament winner, receive the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Three years ago, Bryant University from Rhode Island and Central Connecticut State shared the NEC regular season but it was St. Francis-Brooklyn, which was 12-18 and the No. 5 seed for the league tournament, that won three games to earn the NEC automatic bid. The Terriers would lose to UConn.

"So for every celebration that you see when there's an upset in one of those conferences, there's a devastated bunch of kids who go, 'Those last five months meant nothing. Now we can't play in the NCAA tournament,' " Auriemma said. "We've been in that situation where we've played a team from a one-bid conference that had a losing record or 15-14 or whatever. It hurts the conference. It hurts those kids who spent five months proving they were the best team in the league. If you're going to get seven or eight teams from your league, that's one thing. If you're going to get one, you'd better send your best team. And your best team isn't always the one that had three good days. Sometimes it is."