{"id":83336,"date":"2013-09-06T15:52:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T19:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=83336"},"modified":"2015-12-14T11:04:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T16:04:55","slug":"geno-will-coach-2016-u-s-women-in-rio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/09\/geno-will-coach-2016-u-s-women-in-rio\/","title":{"rendered":"Geno Will Coach 2016 U.S. Women in Rio"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Geno<\/a>
Geno Auriemma, left, UConn Women’s Basketball Head Coach, and Jerry Colangelo, USA Basketball Chairman, at a press conference in Gampel Pavilion on Sept. 6 announcing that Auriemma will serve as the USA Basketball Women’s National Team Head Coach for the 2016 Olympics. (Kenneth Best\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo and women\u2019s national team director Carol Callan knew that after leading the 2012 United States Women\u2019s Olympic Basketball Team to the gold medal in London, Geno Auriemma had said he would not return as the team\u2019s head coach for 2016. Each time he was asked by reporters about a return, Auriemma said the same thing: \u201cI did it, and now it\u2019s time for someone else to take a turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in remaking USA Basketball following the men\u2019s national team loss in the 2004 Athens Olympics, Colangelo began to insist on greater continuity throughout the program, including the women\u2019s teams. He managed to convince Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski to return for a second tour as men\u2019s coach for 2012, and Colangelo wanted Auriemma back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women\u2019s dominance in basketball has been unbelievable. There\u2019s a little bit of pressure in trying to maintain that dominance,\u201d Colangelo said, during a news conference Friday at Gampel Pavilion to announce Auriemma\u2019s return as head coach for the U.S. Women\u2019s National Team. \u201cYou need the kind of a personality who\u2019s ready for that kind of a fight. I think Geno represents that. Since I took over USA Basketball in 2005, continuity was an important thing to me and changing the culture was an important thing to do. We were able to accomplish that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma has been involved with USA Basketball since 1993, when he served as head coach for the U.S. Olympic Festival West Team. He subsequently served as head coach for several other Select and Junior teams, and was an assistant coach on the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team that won the gold medal under Nell Fortner of the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever. The 2012 London team led by Auriemma included former Huskies Sue Bird \u201902 (CLAS) of the Seattle Storm, Swin Cash \u201902 (CLAS) of the Chicago Sky, Tina Charles \u201910 (CLAS) of the Connecticut Sun, Asjha Jones \u201902 (BUS) of the Connecticut Sun, Maya Moore \u201911 (CLAS) of the Minnesota Lynx, and Diana Taurasi \u201905 (CLAS) of the Phoenix Mercury. All of these former UConn student-athletes have also had a long history with USA Basketball.<\/p>\n

Auriemma said he knew USA Basketball had never asked a women\u2019s head coach to return for another tour to lead the national team, and he did not want to presume that he would be asked to return. In the meantime, he said \u201cU.S. leaders\u201d \u2013 whom he declined to name \u2013 were asking if he would return as coach. Then in July, as the 2013 NCAA Champions were about to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House, Auriemma\u2019s telephone rang.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phone rings and it\u2019s Carol and [USA Basketball executive director and CEO] Jim Tooley saying, \u2018We\u2019re calling to ask you be the Olympics coach and this is why,\u2019\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cI\u2019m thinking, this can\u2019t be an accident. This was planned when you\u2019re in Washington and you\u2019re being asked to represent your country again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma said he would think about the offer, checking with his family to determine whether they thought it was the right thing to do. They said yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s my job to ask all those players who won the gold medal in London to come along for this ride and help win a gold medal again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Callan said USA Basketball would begin training for the national team soon, noting the challenge of having the nation\u2019s top women\u2019s players still finishing the WNBA season, with most having commitments later to play overseas.<\/p>\n

Auriemma said USA Basketball had already started to contact members of the 2012 Olympic Team to see who would be interested in playing for him again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far the only ones who\u2019ve been on the fence are the six who played for me at Connecticut,\u201d he said, breaking up the room with laughter.<\/p>\n

Alumni, friends, and fans are invited to an evening with Coach Geno Auriemma on Oct. 10, hosted by the UConn Alumni Association Southeast and New Haven Chapters. For more information, go to the Alumni Association website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Auriemma announced his return as head coach for the U.S. Women\u2019s National Team at a press conference Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":83335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-83336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 02:05:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83336"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107143,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83336\/revisions\/107143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/83335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83336"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=83336"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=83336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}