By Matt Birch
UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma has spent 30 years at the university and built a dynasty during his tenure. He seems to be quite comfortable where he is, and hasn’t expressed interest in switching over and coaching men’s basketball.
But he’s never ripped the state of men’s basketball—until now. Auriemma was asked about it during the women’s Final Four teleconference on Wednesday, and he said he thought the game was a “joke”:
I think the game is a joke. It really is. I don’t coach it. I don’t play it, so I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it. But as a spectator, forget that I’m a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it’s a joke. There’s only like ten teams, you know, out of 25, that actually play the kind of game of basketball that you’d like to watch. Every coach will tell you that there’s 90 million reasons for it.
And the bottom line is that nobody can score, and they’ll tell you it’s because of great defense, great scouting, a lot of team work, nonsense, nonsense. College men’s basketball is so far behind the times it’s unbelievable.
This is entertainment we’re talking about. People have to decide, do I want to play 25 bucks, 30 bucks to go see a college scrum where everybody misses six out of every ten shots they take, or do I want to go to a movie?
These comments came out of left field, and we have to wonder why Auriemma waited this long to say anything. And sure, it’s easy to rip something that may appear broken, but if Auriemma really wanted to help fix the sport, he would’ve offered some solutions to do so. He did say some rule changes are necessary in the future, but did not elaborate further.
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