STORRS, Conn. — UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma passed Tara VanDerveer as college basketball’s all-time winningest coach with the Huskies’ win over Fairleigh Dickinson on Wednesday night in Storrs. Auriemma earned his 1,217th win.
The Huskies’ depth, a rarity in the past few seasons of the program due to a rash of injuries, was on full display in the 85-41 win over Fairleigh Dickinson. UConn played 11 players, including Azzi Fudd, who missed the beginning of this season and all of last season after suffering a knee injury in November 2023. Despite the comfortable win, Auriemma spent the game pacing the sideline, throwing his arms up at missed layups and turnovers. In that way, it felt less like win No. 1,217 and just any other win for the Huskies.
Auriemma, 70, is in his 40th season as a coach with all 40 coming at UConn. He has coached the Huskies to six undefeated seasons (the rest of women’s college basketball accounts for four total), 11 national titles and 23 Final Fours. Alone, he has more NCAA Tournament wins than any program in men’s or women’s college basketball. Auriemma has won the Naismith Coach of the Year award eight times, and in 40 years, he has had just one losing season — his first at UConn.
The Huskies have produced 26 All-Americans (including 17 multi-time honorees), 27 WNBA first-round draft picks and five No. 1 picks, with UConn senior Paige Bueckers expected to go No. 1 to Dallas in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Knowing there was a chance that Auriemma would surpass VanDerveer with a win over Fairleigh Dickinson, UConn planned an event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Auriemma and longtime assistant Chris Dailey’s hiring. More than 60 program alumni — including Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore and Napheesa Collier — attended the game. Auriemma and Dailey were honored at halfcourt with a tribute video and glass-blown basketball engraved with “40 seasons of excellence” before the game.
The sheer number of alumni present at Gampel Pavilion, and how well-known so many are given their storied college and WNBA careers, speaks to both Auriemma’s longevity and his consistency in winning. He reached the 1,217-win mark by winning 88 percent of his games thus far. VanDerveer won 82 percent during her career while former Duke men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski, who held the record before VanDerveer, won 77 percent of his games as a head coach.
Auriemma arrived in Storrs as a first-time coach in 1985. UConn’s program had experienced just one winning season in its 11-year history. Auriemma thought he would stay for a few years until a more well-established program came calling. After the Huskies’ first trip to the Final Four in 1991, Auriemma didn’t receive any calls, but by then, his thoughts on the program had changed and he believed that he and Dailey could build something sustainable in Storrs. With the commitment of All-American Rebecca Lobo in 1991, the program’s fortunes began to turn. By 1995, Lobo’s senior season, UConn won its first national title.
That national title run put the Huskies on the map and allowed Auriemma’s recruiting to improve significantly. In 1998, he signed a class that, at the time (and could still be argued today) was the best recruiting class in women’s basketball history — Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Ashja Jones and Tamika Williams. That core won the program’s second and third NCAA titles and those four players were all drafted in the top six of the 2002 WNBA Draft.
By the early 2000s, with that kind of success, UConn had officially established itself as one of the nation’s Blueblood programs alongside Tennessee and Stanford. Taurasi, Tina Charles and Moore carried the Huskies’ success through the rest of the 2000s, ushering in the Breanna Stewart era and the most dominant stretch in college basketball. From 2013 to 2016, the Huskies won four national titles and set a college basketball record by winning 111 consecutive games.
With his success at the college ranks and with so many UConn players in the national team pool, it wasn’t a surprise when Team USA tabbed Auriemma as coach in 2009 to lead the U.S. for the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, becoming the only coach in women’s Olympic basketball history to lead the team twice.
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(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
