Geno Auriemma Team Quotations

We're not a great free throw shooting team but the fact that we could make that many free throws here when we had to make them, I think that's a great sign for our guys.

We're playing a team that doesn't lose at home. I'll be anxious to see how we approach it.

She's careless and when you're careless all of a sudden it starts to chip away at your confidence because you start making just enough mistakes that are just careless mistakes. Some of it is just that you've got to be more attentive and your intensity level's got to be a lot higher. We need Renee to play at a real high level in order for this team to move forward.

Obviously, you can?t discount how much (Diana) meant because nobody?s ever meant more to any team than Diana has meant to this group of kids. So if you want to compare them to Diana, they fall short, but so does everybody else.

Obviously in the long term, as the season wears on, there's no way you can be as good a team without someone who is, I think, one of the best five players in the league. Meg can put up 20 points every night, and that has to be comforting. But this West Virginia team is still one of the best that I've seen. That team is very difficult to play against.

I don't know which team we're going to see: the team that we've known in the past that plays really well or the one we haven't seen before that's backed into a corner and in danger of not making the Big East tournament.

I don't care if you have the best team in the country or are Cinderella, this is the hardest game to play in that you'll ever play in. The goal for most people is to have an experience of being in the Final Four. After you've been to the Final Four there's no experience like it, except winning a national championship.

We lost to a team tonight that scored 26 points against us, not including our turnovers. They scored 22 points off our turnovers and finished with 48. They shot 20-something (26.3) percent from the floor, and we lose the game. That's probably the most incredible stat you'll ever see in your life.

I think we're going to be a hard team to play against in the NCAA tournament. We play good defense. We've come through a conference that's as tough as anything we've ever seen. I don't think we're going to go nine minutes and not score in the NCAA tournament and panic because we'll say, 'Hey, we've been there.' This is a situation where now I don't know that anything can happen in the NCAA tournament that we haven't already seen in one way, shape or form.

I think a team like ours, they need to be constantly reminded of how hard every game is. This isn't the old St. John's where you're up 25. Those days are behind us. They need to know that every team we play, whether it's Cincinnati, St. John's, it's going to be tough.

I think it was harder than all the other 12 put together. I thought our guys battled through a lot of stuff tonight. We played against a really good team that played their hearts out.

I think today was another reminder for our team that we can be as good as we were on Monday but when we're not all on the same page and not properly focused where we need to be, we can be just like anyone else. I'm hoping that games like this remind us, because once you get into the NCAA Tournament, you play a game like this, you're going to go home.

I said going into the game they're going to get 60. I told the coaches that; I told the team that. And I never in a million years thought that we couldn't get 60.

I said earlier this season that this is probably the worst rebounding team we've had here in 15 years and today was a perfect example of why. Forget the fact that we're probably not big enough or athletic enough in some positions, we get caught a lot of times standing around. We were really fortunate that Pitt didn't capitalize.

That first half, they played us as well as any team has played us. I like the way we responded to that situation when they took the lead. I hope that sets us up well for Tuesday night.

My opinion of the whole thing is it's a joke. The coach of that team should have his head examined.

Whether it's Phoenix or whether it's any other team in that league, they're not going to offer me more money than I'm making at Connecticut. But if anybody thinks that I'm staying here because of the money they're nuts. I didn't come here for the money and I'm not going to stay here for the money. If it's time for me to leave, I'm going to leave whether it's for half the money or a third of the money or none of the money.

We needed some time. The only days we did anything was Friday and Saturday. Both of the days were more of just getting our heads rather than our bodies ready. We had a talk last night with the team and a lot of really good things came out.

We can be as good as anyone in the nation on any given day, and we can be worse than anyone in the nation on any given day. I never know what team is going to show up to play.

Today we played almost well enough to win the game. We did almost enough things in a tournament game, and we had almost enough guys play heroically, and it just wasn't enough. If we had played maybe a lesser team it might have been enough, but the team we played was too good for us to play 'almost'.

We played almost well enough to win. We were almost good enough to win. Almost enough guys played heroically for us. But it wasn't enough. If we had played a lesser team, it might have been enough. But the team we played was too good to be almost good enough against.

You love going to places you've never been. We're playing a team that doesn't lose at home.

There are a lot of players who score a lot of points and they get them whether their team is winning or losing. Ann's always been more about timing and not about how many.

We have a bunch of kids who just don't have the confidence to play here. They don't necessarily exude confidence when they walk out onto the floor. For one of the few times in the 20 years that I have been here, I walk out on the floor and I don't know that my team shares the same belief I do about how we are going to play and compete.

This was probably the biggest win we've had this season because of all the things that go with it. Conference game, we're still in first place, on the road against a team that's going to be there in the end. It may not seem that big right now, but come NCAA Tournament time, some of the things we learned about ourselves tonight will really come in handy.

Duke has more good players than any other team in the country right now. You can say (North) Carolina is talented, Tennessee is talented and Maryland is talented. But look at Duke's roster, the size and speed and quickness and shooting and experience and depth. You name it, they've got it all covered.

(Duffy) should get 40 points if she played the way she did in the last 10 minutes. She's just one of those unselfish kids who wants to get the other people on her team the ball. She showed in the last 10 minutes how hard she is to defend.

Sometimes you think things and you hope they don't happen. But you kind of know that it's coming. You come off some of the games that we just had and you come home and you walk around like you're feeling pretty good. You're playing a team that's missing their best player, and probably physically we're not 100 percent coming out of that trip. So if you put all those things into the mix, it made for one really lousy performance by us.

This is probably the first time since 1991 that I feel like we're truly a team that relies so heavily on each other. Everyone has to make a contribution for us to be really good. And obviously, Barbara and Ann have the ability to make huge contributions, and they did. That's what you expect from them. And sometimes we do forget they've won two national championships. They know how to handle these situations.

This Duke team doesn't seem to talk as much about winning a championship. They just play in a manner that leads you to believe they can win one.

It's easier to fix the plays at the end because they are one-shot deals. What got us 13 down is a little bit harder to fix. I'd have disappointed if it went from 13 to 20. The fact that it went from 13 to two, that's a positive. But getting down 13 on your home court against a Rutgers team that we knew coming in was going to be hard to guard in the perimeter, I'm just really disappointed in the way we came out and played the game.

It's a great barometer for not only what is happening with our team at the moment but what could happen, what might happen down the road. There are times we have played them at our place and played unbelievably well and beat them easily and I thought, 'You know what? I think this team can win the national championship.' There's times when we've played them at their place and got our heads handed to us and I left there thinking, 'You know what? I'm not sure we're a national championship-type team.

I told them before the (Providence) game started, every team that I've ever coached that was consistently good had seniors that were very, very consistent. And it's time now for this group to kind of separate themselves and say, 'Hey, it's time for me to have an impact every single game and not be in those peaks and valleys.' I think they've all kind of made that progression.

It's too hard to get to; it's too far away. My guys get plane-sick when they come over those mountains, so we would have to wait 'til we get a team with a little bit more ... what's the word ... intestinal fortitude.

Everybody?s got something like this. That?s my point. Back in the day, you knew you?d play each team home-and-home and at the end of the regular season, you?d say, ?OK, you won the most games, you win.? Now it?s not like that.

I know that when she gets it going you can't guard her. She can make the three. She can take you off the dribble. She is as strong as anybody else on the court. She has the mentality of a scorer. And she defends. To me,every good team starts with a good point guard.

I knew we would find a different Notre Dame team than the one we played at their place. I knew we would have to play a lot better than we did there. Our post players came up really big. It went exactly the way I thought it would except for the last five or six minutes, considering the kind of week we had.

I'm just happy she's been able to have the kind of year, and her team has had the kind of year they've had. Tina desperately wants to win. She loves winning more than anything else. For her team to be No. 1 in the country and to be named the player of the year in the country, it's deserved on all fronts. She's a great kid and, I think, the best player.

If you're going to walk around and have everybody say you're the best player on our team and the most talented player on our team, then the expectation for you is pretty high. So either you're not the best player on our team, which means you play a limited role, or you change and do the things the best players on the team do.

In some places if you get to the Final Eight and lose to the No. 1 seed and win 32 games, there's 6,000 people waiting to meet you at the airport when you go home. But with us, with our tradition, people say, 'What happened?' We're just a team that came close . . . a team that almost had a chance to be great.

If you're the No. 1 seed or No. 2 seed in women's basketball, there's a reason for that. You have the best team and you have the best players.

I think our defense will be tested, no question. I think our offense is going to be tested. You have to be a good defensive team to win, don't get me wrong. I don't think non-defensive teams are going to win national championship. I don't think non-defensive teams are going to win the Big East championship.

I don't know if have played a team this year that was harder to play than Georgia was in every area of the game.

If I could predict what this team is going to do ... based on our history, we're going to play really good and we're going to do things that are going to put us in jeopardy of losing. That's about the only thing I can predict.

I don't think they've surprised anybody in the Big East with their performance this season. They're going to be an NCAA-level team for a long time.

He and I talk all the time about playing again and we probably will. They're a really good team to play. I think he runs the kind of program that I would enjoy matching up against from a competitive standpoint and from a personal standpoint that I have a lot of respect for him and I have a really good relationship with him. I would want to do it if we could.