Women's Fastbreak On SI

Sue Bird Shares Hilariously Unique Way Geno Auriemma Critiqued Her 'Tight' UConn Team

WNBA legend Sue Bird shared a hilarious story about one of Geno Auriemma's halftime tirades at UConn.

Grant Young

Mar 31, 2022; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Connecticut Huskies coach Geno Auriemma during NCAA women's Final Four press conference at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Mar 31, 2022; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Connecticut Huskies coach Geno Auriemma during NCAA women's Final Four press conference at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The UConn Huskies women's basketball team's legendary coach Geno Auriemma has created quite an impressive culture during his four decades running the iconic program.

This is not only proven by the 11 National Championships Auriemma has won and the dozens of eventual WNBA stars he has coached, but also by how adored he is by his former players.

However, Auriemma isn't afraid to critique these players — which WNBA (and UConn) legend Sue Bird detailed with a hilarious story from her college days that she relayed on a December 17 episode of the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast.

"Coach Auriemma is known for his humor, his wit, and he can be... really cutthroat," Bird said. "Okay. So we're playing, I want to say it was Tennessee... not going well in the first half. Super tentative, kind of nervous probably, whatever.

"We go into halftime. [Auriemma] comes into the locker room, and he just looks around... makes eye contact, and he goes 'Do you know what this is?'," Bird continued while curling her index finger tightly into the space between her thumb and index finger.

"'This is all your buttholes right now.... This is all your a**holes right now,'" Bird quoted Auriemma saying. "And by the way, when he says 'Do you know what this is?' We were all like, 'Huh, what is that? What could this be?'"

Bird then added, "And then he goes on to tell us just how tight we were playing."

Clearly Auriemma knows how to leave a lasting impression on his players, for better or for worse.

Published
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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