Knight Ridder Newspapers

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The most successful women’s basketball coach of the past decade also might be its most controversial. Whether he’s sparring with the men’s coach at his university (since patched up), calling a rival “The Evil Empire” or seeing an opponent point a finger in his chest, Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma always seems to be in the middle of something.

But admirers and critics alike can agree on one thing: The man can coach.

Auriemma, 51, has built a dynasty in Storrs, guiding a onetime losing program to three consecutive NCAA championships, four in five years and five overall.

“You know you’re going up against the best when you play him,” said Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw, the only other coach this century to win an NCAA women’s title.

But Auriemma’s success is sometimes overshadowed by his antics. This week, when asked about Tennessee’s Pat Summitt winning her record 880th game, Auriemma paid her a left-handed compliment, telling the Hartford Courant: “She’s not as bad as I make her out to be.”

Some observers say Auriemma, whose team plays top-ranked Stanford in a regional semifinal Sunday in Kansas City, Mo., is a product of his blue-collar roots.

Born in a village near Naples, Italy, Auriemma, the oldest of three children, had never even been in a car until his family emigrated to the Philadelphia area when he was 7. His parents worked in factories and struggled to provide bare necessities.

Auriemma taught himself English after a nun threatened to keep him in second grade, and he became infatuated with America’s pastime, baseball. The young pitcher moved on to basketball after an arm injury.

He played basketball through high school and soon began climbing the coaching ranks. Auriemma started as a part-time women’s assistant at St. Joseph’s under Jim Foster (now the women’s coach at Ohio State). Later, he was a boys assistant at his high school alma mater under Phil Martelli (now the men’s coach at St. Joseph’s).

When Virginia’s Debbie Ryan hired him as her top assistant in 1981, only three years after he started at St. Joseph’s and after Martelli turned down the position, Auriemma had reached his final stop before landing the Connecticut job in 1985.

“He was the same, no different,” Ryan recalled Thursday. “Very outspoken, very good coach, understood the game, was somebody that you could tell was going to be a star. He was just a very, very strong coach, someone that is very intelligent, very bright and got along well with all types of people.”

And yet Auriemma has a reputation of not getting along with many people at all. He and Jim Calhoun clashed after the Connecticut men’s coach told the Dallas Morning News in 1995 that the women’s team might have to arrange a day-care center and senior citizens home for its fans. (Tensions have long since cooled, and the two have worked together to raise money for cancer research.) Auriemma has called Summitt’s program “The Evil Empire,” and he once had a feud with Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer. This month, he was embroiled in another controversy when Rutgers’ Cappie Pondexter confronted him after the Big East tournament final.

The guard pointed an index finger in his chest because she thought Auriemma made a disparaging remark at a teammate during the game. Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer blasted Auriemma afterward but later called it a misunderstanding. The Big East exonerated Auriemma, whose team won the game.

Still, the story maintained its shelf life because Rutgers returned to Connecticut last weekend for the NCAA tournament. (The teams did not play.)

“Nobody is going to jail over this,” Auriemma said. “There is no criminal intent. Reasonable people can come to reasonable conclusions about what happened and move on. There’s a lot more things to worry about this time of year than that.”

At this time of year, no coach has been better than Auriemma for more than a decade. His “95 team generated national headlines when it went 35-0 and won the program’s first NCAA title. He needed five years to win a second, but now they are coming in droves. This year’s team, though less talented, is seeking an unprecedented fourth title in a row.

“He’s done a great job recruiting to UConn, and I think the timing of women’s basketball and ESPN kind of coming in together, you get to see the players on television,” said VanDerveer, who has patched things up with Auriemma. “He has an excellent staff. He teaches the game very well. He’s in a basketball-crazy place. The whole state embraces women’s basketball. It’s a great environment.”

When Auriemma accepted the Connecticut job, friends teased him and wondered if it was merely a steppingstone to a men’s job. His parents worried about him moving to the middle of nowhere. But he, wife Kathy and their three children have found a comfort zone in Storrs. Now Luigi Auriemma, who became known as Geno, sits atop his profession.

“I’m a little taken aback by how much has happened, just in the last 10 years,” Auriemma told the Hartford Courant in January when the newspaper reported his new five-year, $4.875 million contract, the richest in women’s basketball.

“When you go back to when I started coaching and took the Connecticut job, to be at this point right now is unimaginable. I’m incredibly fortunate to have been in a place where all that was made possible.”