STORRS, Conn. — Chris Dailey is a woman of routine.
She runs practices like clockwork. She delivers her locker room pep talks with efficiency. And she adheres to a strict schedule in the morning before heading to the University of Connecticut: She gets up, works out and goes to Panera Bread.
“It’s a little embarrassing — I used to get their iced tea but I don’t really like it, so now I make my own and I just go there because I like their cups, and I have people there that I talk to,” Dailey, 63, said recently, adding in a near-whisper: “I really just get the ice there.”
On game days, the coach whom players call “C.D.” fills her cup with a special treat: Diet Coke. She’ll bring it with her onto the court and tape over the brand’s name “so we don’t get in trouble,” she said.
For 38 years, Dailey’s routines have kept the Connecticut women’s basketball program running at full steam. She is the yin to Coach Geno Auriemma’s yang, the steady voice to his occasional courtside outbursts, the structure to his more fluid approach. The two couldn’t be more different — he arrives five minutes before a plane is scheduled to take off, she prefers not to travel with him anymore — but together, they have transformed the Connecticut program, and with it,…
