Staley pushes prospect pipeline in aim to diversify coaching

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Geno Auriemma has 17 years and 10 national titles on Dawn Staley, as Connecticut and South Carolina enter the NCAA championship game.

Auriemma, over his 37 seasons guiding the Huskies, has redefined the standards for success in the sport with his staggering 11-0 record in the final.

Staley, whose breakthrough for the trophy with the Gamecocks came in 2017, has no designs on trying to catch him.

“I won't be here at 68,” she quipped.

Women’s college basketball has largely been shaped by legacy coaches like Auriemma, Pat Summit at Tennessee, Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame, C. Vivian Stringer at Rutgers and Tara VanDerveer at Stanford, to name some of the longest and winningest tenures.

In the continuing push to put more women, and particularly Black women, in these prominent leadership positions they've historically been underrepresented in, one important piece to the puzzle lies in the pipeline of prospects for these jobs when they open up.

“Maybe we’ve been so good for so long we’ve overshadowed some of the good, young coaches,” Auriemma said on Saturday, as UConn and South Carolina practiced at Target Center in preparation for the championship game.

“If I left UConn tomorrow, some 60-year-old isn’t going to get the job," Auriemma said. "It’s going to be a young coach who is really good, who really knows what they’re doing, and is going to come in and hopefully keep us exactly where we are right now, if not better.”

That doesn't happen without intentionality.

“We’re recruiters, so we want to find that gem in the back of a gym where nobody is and then you give them a platform to be great. We have to do that for the people in our game in order for us to advance them,” said Staley, the Hall of Famer who's in her 14th season at South Carolina after an...