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Geno Auriemma Ribs Paige Bueckers With Comparison to Sarah Strong as a UConn Freshman

UConn Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma detailed a hilarious story that explains the difference between Sarah Strong and a freshman Paige Bueckers.

Grant Young

Apr 1, 2022; Minneapolis, MN, USA; UConn Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) jokes with UConn Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma (middle) while walking off stage after a media conference after defeating the Stanford Cardinal in the Final Four semifinals of the women's college basketball NCAA Tournament at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Apr 1, 2022; Minneapolis, MN, USA; UConn Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) jokes with UConn Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma (middle) while walking off stage after a media conference after defeating the Stanford Cardinal in the Final Four semifinals of the women's college basketball NCAA Tournament at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Geno Auriemma has coached a ton of the world's best women's basketball players during his 40 seasons as the head coach of the UConn Huskies program.

What's particularly cool about this is that these players often overlap in his program, which means each future superstar gets to learn from their veteran teammates.

Then again, given that each player and each team is going to have their own personalities, this doesn't necessarily mean that each team's star is going to heed the example that their predecessors provided them — which could be good or bad, depending on the players.

In Auriemma's opinion, the latter could be the case this year with superstar senior Paige Bueckers and freshman Sarah Strong, which he hilariously alluded to with a story during his February 21 appearance on The Athletic Women's Basketball Show.

"Sarah loves being coached, Sarah looks right through you, like right into your soul when you're talking to her," Auriemma said about Strong. "She loves being coached, she asks a lot of questions, she wants to learn more than anything in the world.

"[She's] a 180 from Nika [Muhl] and Paige [Bueckers] when they were freshmen, when I had to convince them that I knew what I was talking about," he added.

"I actually made this comment one time to Paige when she was a freshman. I said 'Listen: I'm so grateful that after 35 years of coaching, I finally had somebody come to my program that could show me everything I was doing wrong. So I can't tell you how grateful I am for this experience.'"

This hilarious story seems to perfectly encapsulate the relationship that Bueckers and Auriemma have cultivated with each other over the past five seasons.

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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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