While I always thought of UConn as the Evil Empire, I always respected Geno as a coach. I think "hate" between Muffet & Geno was overblown and most of the confrontations were because both were highly competitive and the heat of the moment.

This past January, Geno Auriemma had a surreal moment where, in front of a sellout XL Center crowd eager to witness the revival of the UConn-Tennessee rivalry, he looked down the court and saw Kellie Harper, a former Lady Vol he had coached against, on the sideline where the late Pat Summitt used to stand.
Auriemma will find himself in a similar situation next season. When UConn plays Villanova in its first year back in the Big East, he will face off against Denise Dillon, who recently took the reins from Harry Perretta upon his retirement. And then again when the Huskies travel to South Bend, where two weeks ago Niele Ivey was introduced as Notre Dame’s new head coach following Muffet McGraw’s retirement.


Summitt, Perretta and McGraw — fixtures not just in women’s basketball, but in Auriemma’s storied career — all gone from the game, now replaced by their pupils.
“Jesus,” exclaimed Auriemma, who celebrated his 66th birthday in March and is set to embark on his 36th season as head coach in Storrs this fall. “When I look at that, I go, ‘Man, is somebody trying to tell me something?’”



It’s been eight years since Summitt, Auriemma’s first major rival, stepped down at Tennessee after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and nearly four since she died. Following Perretta’s announcement that he’d retire at the end of the 2019-20 season, his close friend Auriemma told reporters that he tried to talk Perretta into it years ago.
But McGraw’s decision to step down? That was a shock to Auriemma. So much so that when he reached out to her, his first concern was whether the decision was health-related — it wasn’t.



A battle at the top
McGraw’s Hall of Fame coaching career — 936 wins, nine Final Four appearances, two national championships, 20 WNBA players across 33 years — is amazing in its own right. Yet deeply intertwined in that legacy were the Irish’s high-stakes battles against Auriemma’s Huskies, her victories in many of them helping solidify Notre Dame as one of the nation’s elite programs.
Getting through UConn practically became a requirement for the rising Irish if they wanted to compete for national titles. All but one of Notre Dame’s nine Final Four appearances, including five straight from 2011-2015, featured a meeting with the Huskies, either in the semifinal or title game.


McGraw didn’t shy away from mentioning UConn in her retirement announcement, either. It was noted that the Irish knocked UConn out of the NCAA Tournament five times, more than double the next team’s highest total, and that McGraw had nine wins over Auriemma this decade, only two fewer than all other coaches combined.
UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw don’t much like each other.


UConn never truly lost its perch atop the sport and saw the pendulum swing back in its favor during the Breanna Stewart years, when the Huskies handed the Irish Tournament exits for three straight years, twice beating them in the national title game. But Notre Dame still became the annual challenger to UConn’s presumed or actual top spot in the sport and often proved to be its greatest foil, including as recently as the last two Final Fours.



“Who’s to say how many national championships they would have if it wasn’t for us?” Auriemma said. “And we might have a couple more if it wasn’t for them”

A rivalry — and reversal of roles?
And in more ways than one, McGraw gave Auriemma — both Philly-born coaches whose jabs towards each other became increasingly acerbic over time — a taste of his own medicine.

“In some ways, it was like Pat Summitt and I had changed places," Auriemma said. "I had taken Pat’s spot as the program that everybody wants to beat and Muffet had taken my spot. There were a few times when I would laugh — when we went to the Final Four, we would be pulling in and we would look at the arena and we’d see the sea of blue and ‘UConn this’ and ‘UConn that’ all over ESPN and I remember saying to [Chris Dailey], ‘Remember all the stuff we hated about Tennessee at the Final Four? That all the fans there wanted them to win, expected them to win? It was all orange all over the place? All the TV people knew they were going to win, were rooting for them to win? Have we become that? Does everybody show up at the Final Four go, ‘I hate Connecticut’? Is that who we are now?’
“And now every time I look over, there’s Muffet. And then they started winning just enough and then the same wise-ass that I was towards Pat, she took that role of me. It must be something in the water in the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia."

The end result? The sport’s biggest rivalry across the last 10 years. One with so many games and big moments, overtimes and buzzer-beaters and, yes, tiffs between McGraw and Auriemma that even he can have a hard time keeping everything straight.
“We certainly had our moments," Auriemma said with a laugh. "That is undeniable. There were some great, great, great, great moments, that’s for sure.”
“I love that rivalry,” McGraw said in her virtual retirement press conference. “I think it was great for women’s basketball. When we came into the Big East years ago, Connecticut was the measuring stick, and now to be a team that people know we’re going to give them a great game, it’s going to be a terrific, hard-fought battle, there’s going to be a lot of intensity — I loved all those moments. It was fun watching them recently on ESPN to see all those great wins that we had.”

Those moments will now endure as memories, as McGraw shifts her focus onto other endeavors, women’s advocacy being one of them.
“There’s really a tremendous void in the coaching profession," Auriemma said. “These last number of years, women’s basketball being on the national stage and the Final Four being the biggest stage, Muffet McGraw and Notre Dame have been a huge, huge, huge part of that.”
A new era in South Bend
But the future certainly looks bright in South Bend — even to Auriemma, who sees Ivey as the perfect person to take McGraw’s spot.
"When I saw that’s who they hired, I was like ‘Hell yeah, man.’ They didn’t miss a beat there,” Auriemma said. “I just think she’s an outstanding person. And I think she’s going to do a phenomenal job there.”
Following her playing career in South Bend from 1996-2001, where she led the Irish to the program’s first national title, Ivey returned as a member of McGraw’s coaching staff from 2007-2019. She’s been part of all nine of the team’s Final Four runs and national championships, either as a player or coach.

“Listen, it’s not easy coming in,” Auriemma said. "Whoever was coming in to that job is going to have an impossible situation. How do you build on a Hall of Fame career and all those Final Fours and national championships and all that? But I think having a former player in there, having somebody like Niele who has played there, coached there, I just think that’s an amazing hire.”
To what extent can the rivalry exist without McGraw? Can Notre Dame under Ivey remain one of the sport’s premier programs, and how will it fare against the rest of the nation’s elite? The ongoing series between UConn and Notre Dame, featuring one meeting per season through 2023-24, will offer a few opportunities to find out. And Auriemma is already looking forward to it.

“I just love Niele. I love everything about her,” Auriemma said. "I love how passionate she is. I love her intensity level and her coaching style and watching her on sideline and seeing her during the summer at recruiting. She’s great to be around.
“If they kick our [butt] the next three years," he added with a chuckle, "I might not say this.”

About Muffet:

“There’s really a tremendous void in the coaching profession," Auriemma said. “These last number of years, women’s basketball being on the national stage and the Final Four being the biggest stage, Muffet McGraw and Notre Dame have been a huge, huge, huge part of that.”


About Niele:

“I just love Niele. I love everything about her,” Auriemma said. "I love how passionate she is. I love her intensity level and her coaching style and watching her on sideline and seeing her during the summer at recruiting. She’s great to be around.

“If they kick our [butt] the next three years," he added with a chuckle, "I might not say this.”