UConn's Geno Auriemma Passes Pat Summitt for Second on Wins List
UConn's Geno Auriemma got his 1,099th career victory on Tuesday with a 103-35 win over Butler, passing the late Pat Summitt for second on the Division 1 women's basketball wins list.
Summitt went 1,098-208 from 1974 to 2012 while Stanford's Tara VanDerveer is in first with 1,105 wins.
"It's obviously something that you take tremendous pride in," Auriemma said before the game. "And you can look back on as an incredible accomplishment, to be able to coach this long. To have the opportunity to coach this long, and to want to do it.
"If you put me back in time and drop me down here in 1984 again and say, 'Hey, try to do this,' I would say it's not doable.' Yet in the next breath, I can say, 'But we did it.' And we're not finished yet."
Auriemma, 66, is in his 37th season with UConn. He's led the Huskies to win 11 national championships and been a part of the Women's Final Four 20 times, including the past 12 in a row. The program has had six undefeated seasons under his watch, including in 2009, 2010 and 2016 title runs.
The 66-year-old is also the fastest to reach 800, 900 and 1,000 victories, and has coached seven fewer seasons than VanDerveer, 67, who began her career in 1978.
Auriemma and Summitt had faced each other 22 times between 1995-2007, and while the relationship was sometimes contentious, the two did bond. He has been a donor to the Pat Summitt Foundation, which raises money for Alzheimer's research. Summitt died at 64 after a five-year battle with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
"We have a long history," Auriemma said this month. "If that didn't exist, I don't know that we'd be talking about it like this. We'd be talking about, 'Hey, you're not that far behind Tara.'
"Back when Pat was alive and winning championships, everybody would talk about Pat in two ways. One, 'I admire her so much, she wins so much, she does it the right way.' Then you had the other part of the population that would go, 'Man, I want to beat Tennessee so bad.'"
