Chris Taylor, the Chief Development Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, arrived at UConn as a freshman in 1985, the same year Geno Auriemma was hired to lead the Huskies’ women’s basketball team. At that time the program had had a single winning season, and Taylor said you could count the number of games he attended on “one finger.”
Four decades later, Auriemma is the winningest coach in college basketball history and Taylor is a superfan. The UConn alum got to welcome Auriemma to the floor of the NYSE on Tuesday, where he rang the opening bell in celebration of the Huskies winning their record 12th NCAA Championship last month.
Advertisement
“UConn women’s basketball is appointment TV for those who went to UConn, live in Connecticut, live in the region, and really nationally,” Taylor said. “They understand when they put on a UConn women’s basketball game that they’re going to watch basketball the way it was meant to be played: With passion and teamwork that is really unmatched and unrivaled.”
Taylor rattled off a list of Auriemma’s accomplishments that only scratched the surface of his resume, pointing out that the legendary Huskies coach has won far more championships since his Naismith Hall of Fame induction in 2006 than he had before earning the sport’s highest honor. UConn went undefeated in the Big East for the 12th time under Auriemma in 2025, and the team finished the season in storybook fashion with a dominant NCAA Tournament run to end a nine-year title drought.
“This year’s championship was truly a special one,” “I think a lot of people counted UConn women’s basketball out as the dominant program in this country and had maybe even counted Coach Auriemma and Coach (Chris) Dailey and his great staff out as well. They proved that wrong with a 12th national championship … Watching a team peak at the right time is truly a joy to watch, and this country experienced another great UConn women’s basketball team this year.”
Auriemma, 71, is the oldest coach to ever win a national championship in college basketball, and he joked when he took the podium at the NYSE that most of his colleagues just have a better sense of when to get out. But Auriemma can’t seem to stop winning, and he isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future. The Huskies return star guard Azzi Fudd, the Final Four Most Outstanding Player, next season for her redshirt senior year, and freshman phenom Sarah Strong will also be back and better than ever with a year of experience behind her. UConn also signed former Wisconsin star Serah Williams, a 6-foot-4 junior forward, out of the transfer portal to fill an immediate need in the front court.
Advertisement
The Huskies have dreams of a repeat in 2025-26, but Auriemma said every title still feels like it’s once-in-a-lifetime with each new group of players.
“It’s so fragile, these things. You try to hold on to something as best you can, but nothing lasts forever,” Auriemma said. “So for it to happen again nine years later, I tell my players all the time, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m the same person today that I was a month ago before we won our 12th national championship. I don’t have anything today that I didn’t have then. But for every one of my players … their whole lives have changed, for the rest of their life … and you don’t know if they’ll ever have another opportunity. Some of them might, but there’s no guarantees.”
Auriemma has witnessed the dramatic growth of women’s basketball as a whole throughout his four decades as a face of the sport, but he has also seen UConn itself develop from a small regional university into a national brand. From alumni cheering him on at the Stock Exchange to the thousands of fans that filled the streets of Hartford for the team’s championship parade on April 13, Auriemma said the titles ultimately mean the most to him because of what they mean to the Huskies community.
“It’s not about me, and it’s not about my team necessarily, but it’s about the people who appreciate what we do,” Auriemma said. “When things like this happen … it makes you as a UConn alum, a UConn supporter, that makes you bigger than you were last year and the year before, because everything we do reflects on you. That to me is the biggest thing we get out of this. We get to live it every day, but you’re sitting there watching and cheering and supporting. If you weren’t there, there would be no us. We’re here because of you, and you’re here because of us.”
