In Jan. 1981, the Army Black Knights handed the UConn Huskies a 66-57 loss. It would be the first and last time it broke the Huskies’ heart. Four years later, Geno Auriemma took over UConn’s head coaching role and faced the Army in 2007, 22 years later. The Huskies humiliated them with an 82-33 win on New Year’s Eve. 

Almost 20 years later, both teams are once again facing each other, but in a game that holds little to no importance. Auriemma is barely bothered about the Army game, and more about intangibles that he thinks his team needs to figure out. 

“Yeah, probably one of the things is making sure that we become a more vocal team, a more disciplined team defensively, a more consistent team offensively, and finding our rhythm. Some of these things just take time,” he said when asked about things he would want his team to fix before regular season. 

This is not the first time that Geno has flagged lack of communication and vocal leadership on the court. A day after a win over Texas in the second preseason game, he sarcastically said that his players were talkative on social media but not on the court.

“We don’t have a very talkative team on the court. They use it all up on TikTok and whatever else they are doing,” he said. “But when they come on the court, they don’t speak very much. So, someone has to take the lead.

“Sarah [Strong], being who she is, her voice carries a lot of weight. She had it easy with Paige [Bueckers] and Kaitlin [Chen], and this year, she’s taken more ownership, more responsibility.”

With Bueckers, Chen and Azzi Fudd, Strong didn’t have to take much of the leadership responsibility despite being one of the best players on the team. In her junior year, Auriemma has been pushing her to be more vocal before people outside started talking about her and the team. 

Geno Auriemma wants his team to run an inclusive offense

The UConn Hall of Fame coach is treating the Sunday preseason clash against Army as the game to address issues with his team and set a tone when the season begins next month.

“We can score a lot of different ways, but basically you just want to see how the movement is, and for me that’s always important: do we get and generate enough movement offensively, and if we are, then multiple people get a chance to score. So we’ll be looking for that tomorrow, and it’s not going to be easy to score against our schedule,” he added. 

Last season, the Army Black Knights concluded their season with a 26-8 record, the second-most wins in the program’s history. They also advanced to the Great 8 in the WNIT, their farthest run in the postseason while competing in Division I.

The second-ranked UConn is scheduled to play Army on Oct. 25 at 4 p.m. at the M&T Bank Center at Harry A. Gampel Pavilion. This is UConn’s final preseason game before they start their regular season on Nov. 2 against Cornell at 5 p.m. in PeoplesBank Arena. 

Geno Auriemma calls out his team for turnovers and “bad decisions” against Texas

So far, the Huskies have played two preseason games and won both. They beat Syracuse by 88-60 on Oct. 12 at Mohegan Sun Arena behind Sarah Strong’s 15-point performance. Usually, the preseason gives good teams easier opponents, but UConn had Texas, ranked No. 6, in its next schedule. The Huskies had to work harder for points.

The first two quarters remained close, and the game was tied at halftime. However, the Huskies’ strong performance in the third and fourth quarters was too much for the Longhorns to handle. UConn outscored them by 11 points in each period. Strong and Jova Popovic led the Huskies with 27 and 22 points. 

While the Huskies have come out victorious in their first two exhibition games, they have shown sloppiness on some fronts. They have committed 28 turnovers as a team in the first two games. UConn had 11 against Syracuse and 17 against Texas. They have also committed a total of 41 personal fouls during their first two exhibition games. After winning over Texas, Auriemma addressed issues with his team.

“Today we scored on a lot of just individual plays, people made pretty good decisions, and then we did some really good things,” Auriemma said in the postgame press conference. “But I thought we turned it over a lot, some bad decisions. But that’s kind of par for the course for this time of year; I think we’re maybe a little bit ahead of where I thought we’d be.”

Such mistakes after two games shouldn’t be as many as they have made. But Auriemma’s trust in his team and being ahead of the schedule is big for the team before they start their title campaign.