USA to Compete in 2010 WNBA All-Star Game: Auriemma Press Conference Quotes

Colorado Springs, Colo. - Jan. 27, 2010
-Announcement

Geno Auriemma
Head Coach: USA Basketball Women's National Team & University of Connecticut
Opening Comments:
When it was brought up to me that we had the opportunity to participate as the U.S. national team in this event, I thought it was an unbelievably great concept. I want to really thank the people at the Mohegan Sun from Mitchell (Etess, Sun Chief Executive Officer) all the way down. First, for hosting the All-Star Game again, and second for embracing this idea of having the absolute best players in the world playing against each other in front of the whole country.

The U.S. national team is going to be made up of obviously the elite players that are playing in the world. Those elite players generally come from the WNBA , which is the elite women's basketball league in the world. All of these players now will get an opportunity to compete against each other in kind of a showcase event.

I don't know if there's any financial benefit to winning the game or losing the game. There might be some extra incentives at my (restaurant) for the winners. So if my team wins, they may get a little better service and a little more food than the losers get, but that's just the way the world works. You win, you get something. You lose, you get left out.

I want to thank everyone that's involved with the event because I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to seeing the players and working with them and being a part of it.

None of this would be possible without someone here who's committed to the game of women's basketball, who's committed to the WNBA and whose franchise right now is the model of how the WNBA needs to operate in the way they hire their coaches, the way they treat their players, the way they treat their fans. The whole organization is a model for the rest of the league. A lot of that credit goes to the CEO Mitchell Etess.

Will the eight core players who have been named to the 2009-12 USA National Team roster automatically be on the USA Basketball team for this game?
First of all, the fans are voting for the All-Star Team. The fans are going to vote and there are going to be 20-some players … I would like to think that the core members of the USA Basketball National team are going to be among those 20-some players and then we'll go from there. There's a national team aspect of this and there's a WNBA aspect to this. So you marry the two of them together and if you use common sense, you say, ‘okay, well there's a national team and there's the rest who are WNBA all-stars.'

This will jump-start the USA's preparations for the Czech Republic. Can you talk about the team's training plans?
We're going to try to have something this spring. We don't have a lot of time with our players together, all of them. So we have to take advantage of whatever time we have. This spring we're going to try to do something. For the All-Star event, obviously we'll be together. Whatever it is, a day or two, I don't know, so that's beneficial for us going forward. Come September, again we won't have all of our players because the players that are playing in the WNBA playoffs, the players that are going to be playing in the semifinals and finals are probably some of our better players. From September first or second or third, when the team starts to convene, all the way up to the championships, we're going to have kind of a mishmash kind of a group. So anytime we can spend together … this All-Star event is one of the few times that this group can get together. I don't know how many will be part of that group. That remains to be seen.

In a perfect world, how much time would you want to have with your team prior to heading to the Czech Republic?
I don't know if there's an optimum time. I think just having all of them together (is beneficial). If you have all of them together, maybe a week is enough. If you don't have all of them together, maybe two weeks isn't even enough. So I don't know. I don't know what the absolute right amount of time is. We lost in the World Championship last time (2006). There's a lot of reasons for that, but I can assure you that one of the reasons was that we didn't have our whole team. Are we going to have our whole team for two weeks or 10 days before the World Championship? I don't know, but we have the best players in the world on the USA team, so I don't care if we have five days. We're going to have enough time to win the whole thing. That's the way I look at it.