Women's Fastbreak On SI

UConn Legends At Odds Over Geno Auriemma's Emotional Paige Bueckers Moment

UConn Huskies icons Sue Bird and Napheesa Collier disagree about whether Geno Auriemma was emotional over Paige Bueckers during the NCAA Tournament.
Grant Young|
Apr 3, 2025; Tampa, FL, USA; UConn Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma during press conference at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Apr 3, 2025; Tampa, FL, USA; UConn Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma during press conference at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

After the UConn Huskies women's basketball team's Sweet Sixteen win over South Dakota State on March 24, Paige Bueckers and Geno Auriemma were sitting at the postgame press conference next to each other.

After Bueckers delivered a final answer about how much UConn has meant to her, she left the podium while the camera panned to Auriemma, who seemed to be visibly emotional about her words.

This (seemingly) emotional moment went viral because Auriemma is not known for showing his feelings this way in front of a camera. However, while Bueckers seems to think it was tears, former Huskies star and UConn legend Sue Bird poured cold water on this moment by refuting her former head coach's emotions.

"It's going around the internet that he was crying. And I just want to say, as someone who played there and knows this man pretty well, ain't no ******* way he was crying," Bird said during a March 27 episode of the A Touch More podcast.

"And that has nothing to do with Paige. He might go home at night and cry about this. No way was he crying on that podium in that moment. No chance," she added.

WNBA icon and UConn alum Napheesa Collier joined Bird and Megan Rapinoe on an April 3 episode of A Touch More. And Auriemma's two former players disagreed about his emotions in this moment.

"It kind of looked like he was crying in the clips," Collier said, which prompted an exasperated reaction from Bird.

"No way was he crying!" Bird said with a laugh. "It looked like something smelled bad."

"I don't know. I can't picture him crying after a Sweet Sixteen game. It looked like he was crying. I can't picture him crying, but I could see him doing it after their actual last game because he loves Paige," Collier added.

Unless Auriemma gets asked about this directly (which seems unlikely at this point), the world will never know whether those were truly tears.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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