John A.: The story of how UConn landed Geno

[pap49cba]

At the time, it was strongly viewed that Nancy Darsch, an assistant to Pat Summitt at Tennessee and on the 1984 Olympic team, was the front-runner for the job. In fact, the women’s team had been told that it more than “90 percent certain” a woman would be hired to replace Jean Balthaser, who was UConn’s coach from 1980-85. But as Meiser tells it, something quickly changed.

LINK

 

[UcMiami]

Really interesting piece and a great plan from the courant to do a little historic perspective on the career leading up to game 1000. Thanks for posting.

 

[VAMike23]

Great stuff !!!

 

[huskybill]

Why is no-one asking the real reason the Utenn assistant coach did not take the job? I'll bet Pat had a lot to do with it. She probably saw how brilliant Geno was as Ryan's assistant and was afraid some SEC team would take him. So she had him sent to a place where he could never be successful. Time has shown how right she was.

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

Nancy Darsch subsequently took over the head coaching job at Ohio State in 1985, replacing Tara VanDerveer.

But it makes you wonder what would have happened had UConn hired Darsch. Would Geno have taken the Ohio State job? VanDerveer had amassed a pretty good track record at tOSU (110-37 in five years; four straight 20-win seasons; final year was 28-3, with a berth in the Elite Eight). Plus, Ohio State had incoming/current players Tracey Hall and Nikita Lowery (who went on to All-American careers) and Lisa Cline (Big Ten POY in 1989).

Anyway, I am sure the UConn administration, students, fans, and alumni base are very glad that the administration picked Geno over Darsch.

As a side note, I honestly think Geno Auriemma has done more for UConn than he would have for Ohio State, had he taken that job. At tOSU, he would have been a high profile coach, but nowhere as high profile as the football coach, as football reigns supreme. In that sense, he would be like Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame...the second-most high profile coach and a bigger profile than the men's basketball coach, but not as big as the football coach (whomever the football coach is at the particular time).

At UConn, he helped not just put the women's basketball program on the map, but also to highlight the university. It cannot be measured the public perception/goodwill, especially among high school students and their parents, that Geno generates through high-profile scholar athletes, who excel at both academics and athletics. They are ambassadors for the university, but also directly and indirectly contribute and lead to others taking an interest in UConn, choosing to donate money there, creating programs and innovative ideas at/with the university, etc.

It really cannot be measured how much of that can be directly or indirectly tied/linked to Geno Auriemma. But I would venture a guess that it is an extremely large amount.

 

[DobbsRover2]

"I knew things would be more difficult, eventually, in the Big East." That's an understatement, since no matter how we think of the relative weakness of the Big East in the 1990s, in 1985-86 Geno's fledgling Husky team was completely overmatched in the conference, going 4-12, and thank gosh that Seton Hall was around for UConn to pick up a solo conference road win. With the Huskies' midseason 5-game losing streak and then a 6-game skid to finish the season, I'm sure that all current BYers who were around at that time were ready to run that Auriemma guy off the campus knowing that he was messing up our plans for the team to win a lot of NCs.

Meiser focuses correctly on all the things that Geno did to impress and to win the job, but it does make you wonder a bit how Darsch was viewed with her pedigree of a UTenn program that was always at the top but still in the spring of 1985 two years away from winning its first NC, versus Geno coming from a rising but still much less strong Virginia program that had been knocked out in the first round a few weeks before by UTenn. Darsch went on to have a solid coaching career with OSU and Liberty, Mystics, etc., but clearly Geno was Mr. Personality in the 1985 campaign at Storrs. And that's a great thing because he has an easy name for us all to spell while we would have had a lot of problems remembering how to spell Darsch.

 

[Kibitzer]

Cam, your post is one of the best ever to appear here on the Boneyard. I thank you most sincerely, confident that I speak for a large number of my brother and sister Boneyard posters and UConn fans. Thanks!

 

[HoopsFan21]

Even more amazing than hiring Geno was also hiring Calhoun at roughly the same time. This is like winning Powerball, then doing it again next week. Most schools will never have a legendary coach on either side, let alone simultaneously having two of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. That's what really boggles my mind when I think about how UConn has become a basketball powerhouse - the sheer luck of it.

 

[Kibitzer]

Even more amazing than hiring Geno was also hiring Calhoun at roughly the same time. This is like winning Powerball, then doing it again next week. Most schools will never have a legendary coach on either side, let alone simultaneously having two of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. That's what really boggles my mind when I think about how UConn has become a basketball powerhouse - the sheer luck of it.

Not luck at all. The search committtees were meeting jointly in conference with the UConn AD and President. The proceedings were interrupted when the sky outside suddenly blackened, a loud clap of thunder actually shook the building and a thunderous voice rocked the room, demanding: "Hire Calhoun! Hire Auriemma! And if you don't, I will really get pissed off!"

 

[UcMiami]

Even more amazing than hiring Geno was also hiring Calhoun at roughly the same time. This is like winning Powerball, then doing it again next week. Most schools will never have a legendary coach on either side, let alone simultaneously having two of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. That's what really boggles my mind when I think about how UConn has become a basketball powerhouse - the sheer luck of it.

Luck? Luck?! You besmirch the brilliance of Mr. Toner who while possibly missing on some other coaches knew exactly what he was doing in basketball.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Not luck at all. The search committtees were meeting jointly in conference with the UConn AD and President. The proceedings were interrupted when the sky outside suddenly blackened, a loud clap of thunder actually shook the building and a thunderous voice rocked the room, demanding: "Hire Calhoun! Hire Auriemma! And if you don't, I will really get pissed off!"

Yeah, that was me in my black hang glider doing the yelling and blasting away with the vuvuzela I got on my South African trip in 1985, but you gotta admit that I knew what I was talking about.

 

[HoopsFan21]

Luck? Luck?! You besmirch the brilliance of Mr. Toner who while possibly missing on some other coaches knew exactly what he was doing in basketball.

Like most things in life there's always a little luck involved. Landing top sports coaches is no exception.

 

[Hongster]

If it wasn't for Geno I will never be a Uconn WCBB fan.

 

[cohenzone]

The reality is, most of the world was not following UConn's hiring of a new women's hoop coach. IMHO, without Geno, there's no reason to believe that our fan base (and I'm not excluding myself) would have been any more into the women's team than most other schools. Despite what anyone else at any other university might pretend, it's not hard to imagine that women's hoops nationally might never have garnered the attention it got and has maintained from TV and also the formation of modern pro leagues had there been no successful Geno at UConn and the rivalry that sprang up between UConn and UT. We''ll never know (lucky for us Husky fans) whether or not the same sort of success by Geno at an Ohio State or any other program would have had the effect on the game in general and sprouted TV interest. I think that there isn't much doubt that the UConn-UT television rivalry was the springboard for the relative emergence into the public mind of women's hoops and certainly in producing UConn's passionate fan base. I also think it isn't much of a stretch to think that elite female athletes who have become basketball players as a first sport with a dream of a hoops scholarship and a pro career should worship Geno, and I mean no disrespect to people like Pat Summitt or Tara Vandavere, but the higher visibility seemingly wasn't happening with their success. It certainly wasn't happening with the success of ODU or LaTech, fair or not.

 

[watanabe]

If it wasn't for Geno I will never be a Uconn WCBB fan.

The original women's team (pre-Geno) was a lot of fun to watch, not to mention that the girls were all very approachable and nice. The field house court, next to the pool entrance, was a great place to watch these ladies practice (it seems that the bleacher'd section with the indoor track around it was mostly reserved for the men's team practices). It was easy to be a fan of the team then as well as now. It is just amazing what Geno has done with the program. the women's team was always great, but on a much more local level. As a UConn gym rat and fellow varsity athlete, I always enjoyed this team from the very beginning. Geno or not, the UConn women's BBall team has always been special. (It is kinda neat what Geno has done with the program tho....)

 

[UcMiami]

cohen - interesting post but I think it would have happened anyway. Geno and Uconn just happened at a confluence of favorable tides in women's sports in general and in WBB in particular. The advent of title IX create exposure and money, women's soccer and women's basketball greatly thrived because of that and because of charismatic players on Olympic teams having great success. And on top of that, cable sports channels were also just beginning to come into existence and needed as much content as they could get.
Considering that there were various professional women's leagues starting and folding between 1979 and 1995 WBA being the first summer league from 1993-1996, with the ABL playing its first season in 1996 and the survivor WNBA starting in April 1996 - the fact that Uconn and TN began playing each other in 1995 seems to be incidental to the growth of the sport. No question that the rivalry and the continued success of both program's stars on the professional and Olympic stage helped feed the fire.

 

[UConnLen]

Luck? Luck?! You besmirch the brilliance of Mr. Toner who while possibly missing on some other coaches knew exactly what he was doing in basketball.

Yes John Toner deserves a lot of credit for where UConn is today on a national scale along with Dee Rowe. A good and honest man, who btw was a football guy! I remember Perno asking me to bring a recruit named Glenn Miller to a game, then going to a boosters dinner and Mr Toner came to us and said that we'd have to pay for Glenn or it would be a recruiting violation. Dom was a bit upset, but we did the right thing. Glenn wound up transferring to Northeastern where as a PG he led them and his soon to be HOF coach to the NCAA's. JC knows talent and Glenn has had a nice career in basketball and coaching!

 

[cohenzone]

cohen - interesting post but I think it would have happened anyway. Geno and Uconn just happened at a confluence of favorable tides in women's sports in general and in WBB in particular. The advent of title IX create exposure and money, women's soccer and women's basketball greatly thrived because of that and because of charismatic players on Olympic teams having great success. And on top of that, cable sports channels were also just beginning to come into existence and needed as much content as they could get.
Considering that there were various professional women's leagues starting and folding between 1979 and 1995 WBA being the first summer league from 1993-1996, with the ABL playing its first season in 1996 and the survivor WNBA starting in April 1996 - the fact that Uconn and TN began playing each other in 1995 seems to be incidental to the growth of the sport. No question that the rivalry and the continued success of both program's stars on the professional and Olympic stage helped feed the fire.

I think TV spurs the attention and all that we have to go on is that TV thought UConn-UT was perfect because the Lobo team was unbeaten and Tennessee was the giant. Perfect storm. A few female players were relatively well known, Nancy Lieberman and Cheryl Miller in particula, but TV had been absent except around tournament time. As I said, it's unknowable what might have happened if Geno had gone to Misssori and had the same success. Anyway, we were lucky and UConn is the attention getter. The WNBA would probably be better off putting teams where the most successful college teams are and giving the teams territorial draft rights like the NBA did years ago.

 

[Vowelguy]

Thank god we didn't get nancy darsch.

 

[doggydaddy]

Nancy Darsch subsequently took over the head coaching job at Ohio State in 1985, replacing Tara VanDerveer.

But it makes you wonder what would have happened had UConn hired Darsch. Would Geno have taken the Ohio State job? VanDerveer had amassed a pretty good track record at tOSU (110-37 in five years; four straight 20-win seasons; final year was 28-3, with a berth in the Elite Eight). Plus, Ohio State had incoming/current players Tracey Hall and Nikita Lowery (who went on to All-American careers) and Lisa Cline (Big Ten POY in 1989).

Anyway, I am sure the UConn administration, students, fans, and alumni base are very glad that the administration picked Geno over Darsch.

As a side note, I honestly think Geno Auriemma has done more for UConn than he would have for Ohio State, had he taken that job. At tOSU, he would have been a high profile coach, but nowhere as high profile as the football coach, as football reigns supreme. In that sense, he would be like Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame...the second-most high profile coach and a bigger profile than the men's basketball coach, but not as big as the football coach (whomever the football coach is at the particular time).

At UConn, he helped not just put the women's basketball program on the map, but also to highlight the university. It cannot be measured the public perception/goodwill, especially among high school students and their parents, that Geno generates through high-profile scholar athletes, who excel at both academics and athletics. They are ambassadors for the university, but also directly and indirectly contribute and lead to others taking an interest in UConn, choosing to donate money there, creating programs and innovative ideas at/with the university, etc.

It really cannot be measured how much of that can be directly or indirectly tied/linked to Geno Auriemma. But I would venture a guess that it is an extremely large amount.

Cam, I was going to post exactly that, almost word for word. I think I should get half of your "likes".

 

[UConnCat]

Just so happens Nancy Darsch was at the XL center last night sitting behind the Memphis bench.

 

[Icebear]

Cam, I was going to post exactly that, almost word for word. I think I should get half of your "likes".

You overestimate the situation.

 

[Hongster]

Thank god we didn't get nancy darsch.

I second to that!

 

[meyers7]

Cam, I was going to post exactly that, almost word for word. I think I should get half of your "likes".

Even though I didn't "like" this post, I "Liked" it anyway, just to try to even you up with the Cam post.

 

[doggydaddy]

Even though I didn't "like" this post, I "Liked" it anyway, just to try to even you up with the Cam post.

I like it.