UConn Coach Geno Auriemma Is In pursuit Of The Impossible

Geno Auriemma judges his teams and his career against an ideal none of them can possibly obtain. Wright Thompson rides shotgun with the Huskies as they go for title No. 12 and discovers the coach’s one true enemy: Auriemma himself.

- Wright Thompson

With three games to win for his 10th undefeated regular season, Geno Auriemma turns an empty $700 bottle of French wine upside down on a sterling silver coaster. He’s explaining to me and his video guy how a steel mill works, specifically the one where he worked in college. He points at the neck, which represents the ground floor where he spent his days. The molten metal once set his shoes on fire. Tonight feels about as far away from burning shoes as a man can travel. He’s relaxed. The Connecticut team charter landed in New Orleans two hours ago. Auriemma and Ben Kantor, the video coordinator, dropped their bags and walked to the French Quarter. It’s past 10 p.m. now in Brennan’s on Royal Street. Old boards creak underfoot. “Mack the Knife” plays on the stereo. Waiters cook steak Diane and bananas Foster tableside. Ben and I are laughing, and Geno is laughing, because using $700 wine to break down the physics of a factory is ridiculous and hilarious and yet somehow makes sense.

Auriemma was born in an Italian village named Montella and has scars on his chest from accidentally rolling into hot coals as a toddler. That’s how they kept babies warm in his old life, laying them close to a fire. He arrived in America at 7 on a boat with his mother, who didn’t speak a word of English. Neither she nor Geno’s father ever learned to read or write, and at 8, he paid the family’s bills. He’s wholly selfmade and is so successful he goes entire seasons without losing and appreciates really expensive wine, like the empty, upside-down Chateau Rayas bottle on the table, soon to be replaced by a full one, right-side up. He’s happy, and yet tonight he’s nursing a feeling he can’t quite shake, one that builds with each undefeated day. The lopsided victories breed complacency and he’s worried about a meltdown.

“We are heading towards one,” he says.