Over the next week, the UConn Huskies can celebrate the past and look ahead to the future. Geno Auriemma could become the career leader in NCAA basketball coaching victories, and guard Paige Bueckers will see where she might be headed in the 2025 WNBA draft.
Auriemma can tie Tara VanDerveer’s record of 1,216 victories when the Huskies — who start at No. 2 in ESPN’s first women’s college basketball Power Rankings of the 2024-25 season — face North Carolina on Friday (6 p.m. ET, ESPN) in Greensboro, North Carolina. UConn hosts Fairleigh Dickinson on Nov. 20 in what could be the record breaker.
When VanDerveer retired from Stanford in April, the countdown started for Auriemma, who entered the season four wins shy of the mark. All his victories have been at UConn, where he and associate head coach Chris Dailey took over in 1985. This season is their 40th anniversary as UConn women’s basketball’s brain trust and the 30th anniversary of the program’s first championship season.
As for Bueckers, she is…
