Few truly understand Geno Auriemma’s standards for the UConn women’s basketball program better than Rebecca Lobo.
“It’s very few people who change your life,” Lobo, 52, exclusively told Us while discussing Apple TV’s Dynasty: UConn Huskies docuseries. “Your parents mold you, inform you. You have teachers that have a big impact. But change you so that you can handle harder things later on? There’s very few people who can do that, and it’s one of his incredible skills.”
Lobo played for the Hall of Fame coach in the 1990s and was on the Huskies’ first championship team in 1995. After being one of the original players in the WNBA, Lobo moved to the broadcast table where she has covered UConn and the rest of women’s basketball since 2004.
Auriemma, 72, has won 12 national championships and is Division I basketball’s all-time wins leader as a coach, regardless of gender. But he has his detractors, including some who believe his coaching tactics go beyond “tough love.”
For Lobo, now a Hall of Famer herself, she experienced it first-hand, admitting that, at the time, she probably did think he crossed lines. Now, she sees it differently, saying that when she came to UConn as a heralded high school player, she didn’t understand what she would have to do to reach her potential.
“I think he was hard on me because I wasn’t giving him my best every day, because I didn’t know how,” she said. “I was young and immature and hadn’t been held to a standard on a daily basis that he was going to hold me to.”
In the docuseries, Lobo recounts crying in Auriemma’s office, only to have her coach tell the story to the whole team in practice days later. Lobo told Us she now sees a method to the madness.
“He doesn’t ever really pull a player aside and yell at her,” she explained. “It’s always in front of everybody because he wants you accountable to everybody. You’re not just accountable to him. You’re accountable to this teammate, that teammate, that teammate. So I think it’s very intentional on his part to call you out in front of everybody else so that you understand.”
Paige Bueckers, the star of the Huskies’ 2025 championship team, had a similar experience with Auriemma. After a demoralizing February loss to Tennessee, Auriemma laid into her during a film session.
“That was the hardest loss, I think, in quite some time,” Auriemma said in the documentary. “Bottom line is, Paige needed to change…. So I took a risk and I said, ‘She is either gonna quit or she’s gonna change.’ So I tried to hurt her like losing hurts.”
And he did. Bueckers, 24, didn’t talk to Auriemma for weeks after that until she finally took it upon herself to call a players-only meeting to announce she was going to be more assertive and the team would, in turn, hold each other more accountable.
The Huskies demolished South Carolina on the road later that month, snapping the Gamecocks’ 71-game home court winning streak. UConn did not lose another game that season.
The story stuck with the series’ director, Matt Hamachek.
“At the end of our interview, I said, ‘Why did you tell me about all of this? Why were you willing to be so forthright and honest?’” Hamachek told Us. “And she said, ‘I don’t want little kids who look up to me to just think that you walk into a gym and you hoist a trophy over your head and confetti starts falling. If you want to accomplish these things, you have to go through this, and it’s hard.’”
Dynasty: UConn Huskies is streaming now on Apple TV.
