{"id":15769,"date":"2025-05-07T10:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/15769\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T10:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:39:14","slug":"uconns-geno-auriemma-rings-opening-bell-at-ny-stock-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/15769\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn’s Geno Auriemma rings opening bell at NY Stock Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Taylor, the Chief Development Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, arrived at UConn as a freshman in 1985, the same year Geno Auriemma was hired to lead the Huskies\u2019 women\u2019s basketball<\/a> team. At that time the program had had a single winning season, and Taylor said you could count the number of games he attended on \u201cone finger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four decades later, Auriemma is the winningest coach in college basketball history and Taylor is a superfan. The UConn alum got to welcome Auriemma to the floor of the NYSE on Tuesday, where he rang the opening bell in celebration of the Huskies winning their record 12th NCAA Championship<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cUConn women\u2019s basketball is appointment TV for those who went to UConn, live in Connecticut, live in the region, and really nationally,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThey understand when they put on a UConn women\u2019s basketball game that they\u2019re going to watch basketball the way it was meant to be played: With passion and teamwork that is really unmatched and unrivaled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor rattled off a list of Auriemma\u2019s accomplishments that only scratched the surface of his resume, pointing out that the legendary Huskies coach has won far more championships since his Naismith Hall of Fame induction<\/a> in 2006 than he had before earning the sport\u2019s highest honor. UConn went undefeated in the Big East for the 12th time under Auriemma in 2025, and the team finished the season in storybook fashion with a dominant NCAA Tournament run to end a nine-year title drought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year\u2019s championship was truly a special one,\u201d \u201cI think a lot of people counted UConn women\u2019s basketball out as the dominant program in this country and had maybe even counted Coach Auriemma and Coach (Chris) Dailey and his great staff out as well. They proved that wrong with a 12th national championship \u2026 Watching a team peak at the right time is truly a joy to watch, and this country experienced another great UConn women\u2019s basketball team this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma, 71, is the oldest coach to ever win a national championship in college basketball, and he joked when he took the podium at the NYSE that most of his colleagues just have a better sense of when to get out. But Auriemma can\u2019t seem to stop winning, and he isn\u2019t going anywhere for the foreseeable future<\/a>. The Huskies return star guard Azzi Fudd<\/a>, the Final Four Most Outstanding Player, next season for her redshirt senior year, and freshman phenom Sarah Strong<\/a> will also be back and better than ever with a year of experience behind her. UConn also signed former Wisconsin star Serah Williams<\/a>, a 6-foot-4 junior forward, out of the transfer portal to fill an immediate need in the front court.<\/p>\n

The Huskies have dreams of a repeat in 2025-26, but Auriemma said every title still feels like it\u2019s once-in-a-lifetime with each new group of players.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so fragile, these things. You try to hold on to something as best you can, but nothing lasts forever,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cSo for it to happen again nine years later, I tell my players all the time, it doesn\u2019t matter to me. I\u2019m the same person today that I was a month ago before we won our 12th national championship. I don\u2019t have anything today that I didn\u2019t have then. But for every one of my players \u2026 their whole lives have changed, for the rest of their life \u2026 and you don\u2019t know if they\u2019ll ever have another opportunity. Some of them might, but there\u2019s no guarantees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma has witnessed the dramatic growth of women\u2019s basketball as a whole throughout his four decades as a face of the sport, but he has also seen UConn itself develop from a small regional university into a national brand. From alumni cheering him on at the Stock Exchange to the thousands of fans that filled the streets of Hartford for the team\u2019s championship parade on April 13, Auriemma said the titles ultimately mean the most to him because of what they mean to the Huskies community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about me, and it\u2019s not about my team necessarily, but it\u2019s about the people who appreciate what we do,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cWhen things like this happen \u2026 it makes you as a UConn alum, a UConn supporter, that makes you bigger than you were last year and the year before, because everything we do reflects on you. That to me is the biggest thing we get out of this. We get to live it every day, but you\u2019re sitting there watching and cheering and supporting. If you weren\u2019t there, there would be no us. We\u2019re here because of you, and you\u2019re here because of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: May 6, 2025 at 12:27 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Taylor, the Chief Development Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, arrived at UConn as a freshman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[6114,7,217,2340,925,6108,2680,2679,231,772,6111,1544,6109,6113,6110,6115,6116,66,923,6107,6112],"class_list":{"0":"post-15769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-azzi-fudd","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-connecticut","12":"tag-ct-news","13":"tag-geno-auriemma","14":"tag-hartford-courant","15":"tag-local-news","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-basketball","18":"tag-ncaa-championship","19":"tag-ncaab","20":"tag-new-york-stock-exchange","21":"tag-paige-bueckers","22":"tag-radenka-maric","23":"tag-sarah-strong","24":"tag-serah-williams","25":"tag-sports","26":"tag-uconn-huskies","27":"tag-uconn-womens-basketball","28":"tag-womens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114466125552680576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}