​Basketball – Olympics: Day 15 Adam Silver Commissioner of the NBA congratulates Head Coach Geno Auriemma after the United States gold medal win during the USA Vs Spain Women’s Basketball Final at Carioca Arena1 on August 20, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Geno Auriemma has become synonymous with UConn women’s basketball as he enters his 42nd season in Storrs, coaching all but four of the Huskies’ seasons as a Division I program.However, in an interview with Barstool Sports host Ryen Russillo this week, Auriemma reflected on three occasions when he seriously considered leaving the UConn program, ranging from an ACC rival just a few seasons into his tenure to a chance to coach in the NBA.”As time went on, an opportunity arose on the men’s side, and I was like that close. But it came at the wrong time in my life,” Auriemma said. “And then, another opportunity came to get involved in the NBA. Again, I was this close, and I couldn’t pull the trigger because by then I was so entrenched in this community, and my kids were so entrenched in this community. Life sometimes gets in the way of things you might have done.”There were a few times Geno Auriemma almost left UConn pic.twitter.com/PqPfXeIPd7- The Ryen Russillo Show (@TheRyenRussillo) September 25, 2026Auriemma opted not to specify further about the men’s offers he received, although Russillo was able to convince the UConn coach to admit that the Sacramento Kings were not in the running.His loyalty to the UConn program has been rewarded with an increasingly untouchable spot in the college basketball record books. The Pennsylvania native recently overtook Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski to become the winningest coach in the men’s or women’s game, racking up 1,288 victories and counting.Such standalone success was hard to imagine at the UConn program Auriemma inherited in 1985, stepping onto a Storrs campus with limited athletic facilities and negligible winning tradition. Even as Auriemma led the Huskies on a few deep NCAA Tournament runs, these limitations led the ambitious coach to seriously consider offers elsewhere.”It was in the early ’90s, there was a job open in the ACC. I thought, ‘I’ve done what I said I was going to do [at UConn]. We got into the top 20, we went to the Final Four in 1991 – you’ve got to be kidding me.’ If I was a woman, that would have been it for me at Connecticut. I would not be here today, I am totally convinced of that.”Sign up for the Connecticut Briefing from CT Insider. Get the biggest headlines of the day from our network of journalists around the state.This article originally published at Geno Auriemma reveals he was ‘this close’ to leaving UConn for men’s coaching jobs.