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After seeing Geno so emotional after the USA Olympic Championship I thought of the following article written by Jeff Jacobs in the COURANT April 7, 2009! I know it's long but please indulge me as it's well worth the read! After the article there's a postscript that explains everything!
Geno, Renee: Meeting Of Minds
April 07, 2009|By JEFF JACOBS, jjacobs@courant.com
ST. LOUIS — After a 26-point performance against Stanford that surely will carve her name into UConn legend, Renee Montgomery ran off the court and into the arms of her coach. Geno Auriemma had more than a hug waiting Sunday. He had a message.
"He told me, 'I always wanted you to have the last practice and play the last game the way it was supposed to be played,' " Montgomery said on the eve of her final college game and her first national championship game. "Sitting here now, I know what he meant. Everything he says is starting to make sense to me.
"Four years and 150 games, Coach finally makes sense. I think he'd crack up at that."
Basketball is a team game, of course, and nothing can be greater than the collective pursuit of a sixth NCAA title, a third perfect season. Still, as the final hours of Montgomery's UConn career tick toward a matchup with Louisville and her friend Angel McCoughtry, it's impossible not to see an extraordinary bond forged between Auriemma and the senior from West Virginia.
He wants this national championship for Renee Montgomery. He wants it bad.
"I don't know that I've wanted anything more than I want this," he said.
There is a point where planning ends and basketball begins, of course, and it meets at a mutual understanding between a coach and his point guard. Ultimately, they must think as one, hear each other's words before they are spoken, speak volumes with one look.
"Any time you have an opportunity to win a national championship, you can follow that trail and it leads right to the point guard or to a guard who can control the game," Auriemma said. "You add to that the special ones who just transcend all the practices, drills, X's and O's, bus travel, air travel, film sessions.
"They're not about just, 'How are we going to guard the pick-and-roll.' That's so insignificant when you're talking about those players, and certainly Renee. I really admire her as a person. Even when she didn't talk to me for a couple of years when Tonya [Cardoza, now Temple's coach] was her coach, I still admired her."
Oh, they enjoy taking playful jabs at each other.
Auriemma talks about how Montgomery, early in her career, ran to his former assistant for TLC. Montgomery talks about how Auriemma yelled so much she couldn't understand him. Clearly, it took much more than getting Montgomery's weight from 115 to 140 pounds - full racks of ribs from Wings Over Storrs helped there - to fill out Auriemma's demands for his lead guard. Jen Rizzotti, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, they've all shouldered the burden, and it was Montgomery's turn.
"I can only imagine how hard it was for him to have a player like Diana and to have to rebuild his program all over again," Montgomery said. "When I was a freshman, he'd say things to me like, 'You need to know what everyone on the court is doing at all times.' I'm thinking this is not possible. He'd go, 'If anybody messes up, it's your fault.' When you're a freshman, it's like, man, this is hard. He's crazy.
"He would just yell so much. It's not that I tuned him out, but I wasn't receiving the message. He'd go, 'Go talk to your mom [Cardoza].' I think he was frustrated that he'd tell me something and it would take her to tell me for it to hit home."
Montgomery said Cardoza translated for her. He meant look for the backdoor. . . . If Ann Strother is on the left side, you want to go to her side. She had to learn what to do herself before she told her teammates what to do.
CONTINUED...............................
Geno, Renee: Meeting Of Minds
April 07, 2009|By JEFF JACOBS, jjacobs@courant.com
ST. LOUIS — After a 26-point performance against Stanford that surely will carve her name into UConn legend, Renee Montgomery ran off the court and into the arms of her coach. Geno Auriemma had more than a hug waiting Sunday. He had a message.
"He told me, 'I always wanted you to have the last practice and play the last game the way it was supposed to be played,' " Montgomery said on the eve of her final college game and her first national championship game. "Sitting here now, I know what he meant. Everything he says is starting to make sense to me.
"Four years and 150 games, Coach finally makes sense. I think he'd crack up at that."
Basketball is a team game, of course, and nothing can be greater than the collective pursuit of a sixth NCAA title, a third perfect season. Still, as the final hours of Montgomery's UConn career tick toward a matchup with Louisville and her friend Angel McCoughtry, it's impossible not to see an extraordinary bond forged between Auriemma and the senior from West Virginia.
He wants this national championship for Renee Montgomery. He wants it bad.
"I don't know that I've wanted anything more than I want this," he said.
There is a point where planning ends and basketball begins, of course, and it meets at a mutual understanding between a coach and his point guard. Ultimately, they must think as one, hear each other's words before they are spoken, speak volumes with one look.
"Any time you have an opportunity to win a national championship, you can follow that trail and it leads right to the point guard or to a guard who can control the game," Auriemma said. "You add to that the special ones who just transcend all the practices, drills, X's and O's, bus travel, air travel, film sessions.
"They're not about just, 'How are we going to guard the pick-and-roll.' That's so insignificant when you're talking about those players, and certainly Renee. I really admire her as a person. Even when she didn't talk to me for a couple of years when Tonya [Cardoza, now Temple's coach] was her coach, I still admired her."
Oh, they enjoy taking playful jabs at each other.
Auriemma talks about how Montgomery, early in her career, ran to his former assistant for TLC. Montgomery talks about how Auriemma yelled so much she couldn't understand him. Clearly, it took much more than getting Montgomery's weight from 115 to 140 pounds - full racks of ribs from Wings Over Storrs helped there - to fill out Auriemma's demands for his lead guard. Jen Rizzotti, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, they've all shouldered the burden, and it was Montgomery's turn.
"I can only imagine how hard it was for him to have a player like Diana and to have to rebuild his program all over again," Montgomery said. "When I was a freshman, he'd say things to me like, 'You need to know what everyone on the court is doing at all times.' I'm thinking this is not possible. He'd go, 'If anybody messes up, it's your fault.' When you're a freshman, it's like, man, this is hard. He's crazy.
"He would just yell so much. It's not that I tuned him out, but I wasn't receiving the message. He'd go, 'Go talk to your mom [Cardoza].' I think he was frustrated that he'd tell me something and it would take her to tell me for it to hit home."
Montgomery said Cardoza translated for her. He meant look for the backdoor. . . . If Ann Strother is on the left side, you want to go to her side. She had to learn what to do herself before she told her teammates what to do.
CONTINUED...............................