<\/p>\n
Few athletes excel in college and continue to be just as, if not more, successful in the professional league. Diana Taurasi is one of those players. Her college resume at UConn, under Geno Auriemma, was just as impressive as her legendary WNBA career in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
During her time at UConn, Taurasi wasn\u2019t just the best player on the team; often, she was the only player doing everything to win. Other players relying on her got so out of control that coach Auriemma had to set everyone straight.<\/p>\n
During a conversation with Graham Bensinger in 2011, Geno Auriemma revealed that he once called out<\/a> his entire team to give Taurasi some breathing space. He said:<\/p>\n \u201cShe had spent the entire season carrying a bunch of guys who had no business winning a championship. Against all odds, we won a national championship. Then in her senior year, she had to do it all over again, and it just caught up to her.\u201d (4:45)<\/p>\n \u201cShe had to be the best point guard, the best shooter, the best rebounder, the best passer. I had her guard the opposing team\u2019s best player every night, and it just kind of overwhelmed her after a certain point,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n After Taurasi was understandably overwhelmed, Auriemma said that he felt bad for her, which led to him lashing out at the rest of the team. He urged the players to be more responsible and think about the betterment of the team like Taurasi.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n During her time at UConn from 2000-2004, Taurasi made history. She won three NCAA titles from 2002-2004 and was the NCAA Tournament MOP in 2003 and 2004. Decades later, she still has a good relationship with coach Auriemma, and when she retired from the WNBA in 2024, he had high praise for her.Geno Auriemma celebrated Diana Taurasi\u2019s contributions to the game<\/p>\n Taurasi retired from the WNBA as a three-time champion, 11-time All-Star, five-time scoring title winner, six-time peak performer title winner, and many more honors. Taurasi is the all-time leading scorer in WNBA history, a position she has held since June 2017.<\/p>\n With 10,646 points, she sits at the top of the table with a nearly two-thousand-point gap between her and Tina Charles in second place. Widely regarded by many as the greatest WNBA player of all time, Taurasi also holds six Olympic gold medals with Team USA.<\/p>\n When a career so revered finally ended in 2024, Geno Auriemma had some wonderful words<\/a> for her. He told ESPN\u2019s Alexa Philippou:<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to put into words, it really is, what this means. When someone\u2019s defined the game, when someone\u2019s had such an impact on so many people and so many places.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t define it with a quote. It\u2019s a life that is a novel, it\u2019s a movie, it\u2019s a miniseries, it\u2019s a saga. It\u2019s the life of an extraordinary person, who, I think, had as much to do with changing women\u2019s basketball as anyone who\u2019s ever played the game,\u201d Geno Auriemma added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n All the points, records, gold medals, and championships aside, Taurasi\u2019s true legacy is that she revolutionized the game when it wasn\u2019t getting the attention it gets today. She inspired a generation to take up basketball, and the fruits of her labor can be seen flourishing in the WNBA today.<\/p>\n College Sports Network has you covered with the latest news, analysis, insights, and trending stories in football<\/a>, basketball<\/a>, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few athletes excel in college and continue to be just as, if not more, successful in the professional…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":114055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-114054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114961483341535867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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