Geno Auriemma and Breanna Stewart - IN THEIR ON WORDS - Why they go to UConn - Stay to the END!

The national championship goes to Connecticut for the fourth consecutive year as the dynasty fulfills its destiny. Looking back on my four years here in Connecticut, it has been quite a journey. Every great player who comes to college thinks he's better than anyone else. who came here, how is it possible? Two find out after a week that no, I'm not and

they

get a little scared, so what's the reaction? Well, I'll show you how good I am. How are you going to do it? prove how good you are, well I'm not going to listen to anything you say because I already know everything when we got into conference play and stuff like that, everything started going downhill, keeping it all together, I couldn't figure things out and It was frustrating because I didn't know what to do, you know, I'd never been in that position before and you know, being here in a place where the standards are so high, I wasn't up to them, she had all the basketball. her skill level potential and all that, but physically she just couldn't handle the day to day grind and the physical aspect of the college game because of that, emotionally she wasn't prepared for her first experience of failure. .

The turning point of my first year was definitely the loss of Bailey here's Stuart with a bad soft Mist to the right of the iron, Steward to shoot, he's had a difficult first half. I want to be able to have an impact on my team and I felt like if I had done that the result would have been different but there was nothing foreign about Stewart being an insecure and insecure freshman, a month later she found her confidence and her game. I don't know exactly what it was, but I put things together and I just wanted to go out and play basketball and I didn't want to end senior year on a bad note and I just forgot about everything else, I forgot about all the struggles in the middle of the season. and stuff like that and I just went out and played basketball and I'm glad. that I was able to get over it and now it's something I'll be able to use tell Cindy what you said about Stewie already oh you already did it yeah what she said she's trying to do it her way and when when she tried to do it it was her way last year she struggled with all of that started trying to do it our way every time something went her way she acted like oh it's okay it doesn't bother me right?

What do you mean she doesn't bother you? You have a bad attitude because you're always right, so you always go through a period of time where you say, listen, either you're going to let me train you and make you better or one where you're not going to play and then you're just going to

stay

. a great player's butt is on the bench or two, you will never reach your potential, you know, it's like Enigma, but she's good, she has to grow and becoming MVP in a final four doesn't make you grow, you know what? I mean, we still have to grow, we, my coaching staff, we put a lot of importance on body language, the goal is to turn them and protect them and then once you get to the middle, keep them to the side, we don't want to catch them.

We don't want to get there and if your body language is bad you will never get into the game. I don't care how good you are if someone says well you know you just benched Stewie for 35 minutes in the Memphis game. A couple years ago, yes, I did, oh, when I was a motivator for the South Carolina game the following Monday, no, it wasn't Stewie. He was acting like he was 12, so I put her on the bench and said, sit there, it doesn't matter. on our team now the other coaches might say well you can do that because you have three other, you know, all-Americans.

I get it, I get it, but I'd rather lose than watch kids play the way some kids play. Where is she now? exactly where she's supposed to be she's playing to her potential most of the time if she was playing to her potential all the time I'd be surprised because no one does that at this age the worst year like it was obviously pressure um I think she was I wasn't playing that hard. well like I wanted to, no, I was struggling like in the practice aspect, you know, I thought I was working hard and I didn't really realize that there was more to do, um.

I was a little stubborn I'm a little stubborn sometimes um and stubborn I was trying to do my thing my way and he wanted me to do things his way and we were like that for a while so in the end I always lose. I have had so many times where he would yell at me where he was. He was doing something wrong in an exercise. I missed a rebound like he was fine. I miss a rebound looking back. I'm like wow, so he was like Stewie. It was like, see those stairs? He said: Correlas. I was like what?

So I was running the stairs during practice. They just continued. He forgot me. I left and left Looking back Now I could have handled my first year better. I'm sure there are always things we can do better, but it's the way he helped me through my four years, like it was the best decision of my life. Life, obviously, throughout the recruiting process, you're looking at a lot of schools, but you know UConn stood out, it wasn't just what

they

did here, but the relationships, the way the players treated each other, the how the coaches treated the players.

Lisa, you have to tear down this past. Here we go with Coach Riana. Any player who comes into her program wants him to leave a better person and a better player. You know, when we talk about it. You know, about a week before. It was released, you know, and she let us know, she let some of us know. uh, you know, you don't really get the whole picture, you don't really get the whole gist of it all until you read it. when you read it it's different, it's different, it's quite powerful and, you know, it's not easy, you know, it couldn't have been, it couldn't have been, but still he's growing a lot in the last couple, I think she's not. senior year, but then when she went away and was alone and then lived in China and then was in Seattle being alone, I think she finally felt like an adult and was able to talk about something that was very, very personal. you know it was, you know, you hear about it when it happens to adults, you know it and it makes you shake your head, but when it happens like kids, um, that's another layer of difficulty, I think I'm proud of it.

She has grown a lot and she is fine, she will be fine, she will be better than fine