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Buffalo head coach Legette-Jack and Geno go way back

STORRS -- Buffalo coach Felisha Legette-Jack hasn’t been afraid to show how much of a fan she is of Geno Auriemma and his UConn program. In her first press conference ahead of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, she joked how she hoped to get an autograph from the legendary coach at some point during the weekend.

“I love Geno,” she said after Buffalo’s win Friday, which set up a matchup between the two teams Sunday evening in Storrs. “I love what they’ve done for women’s basketball. He’s stood up for women, he stands up for women, he’s done so much to grow so many women to be phenomenal women. And he can coach, man. And his team is good. I don’t even want to watch them play right now because I’m in awe of this guy, I really am.

"I think he’s awesome. I saw his restaurant, I bought something there. I wasn’t even hungry.”

However, the admiration is mutual between Legette-Jack and Auriemma.

“It goes to prove she’s one of the more intelligent coaches in America. She has great taste, she has great judgement -- impeccable judgement,” Auriemma joked when asked about her comments before getting serious.

“I really admire her and her relationship with her players and how she manages her team during the game and she just has a nice way about her," he said. "She has a great personality and I’m really flattered by the things she said about our team and me personally.”

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The two are no strangers to each other. In fact, their relationship predates Auriemma’s time at UConn. It goes back to when Legette-Jack was a highly-touted high school prospect out of Syracuse, New York, and Auriemma was an assistant coach with the Virginia Cavaliers. He recruited her to come to Charlottesville, but Legette-Jack could see he was poised for bigger things.

“He wasn’t giving all this suave to him, how cool he can be,” she said. “My high school coach said ‘I’m not certain that guy is gonna be an assistant coach that long,’ and I was really was recruited by him [to Virginia].”

Instead, Legette-Jack made the decision to stay at home and go to Syracuse, and her high school coach’s instincts were proven right when Auriemma left soon after to become the head coach at UConn prior to the 1985-86 season. And with Legette-Jack at Syracuse and Auriemma at UConn, that meant the two would see each other on the court in Big East Conference play.

Once again, Auriemma will square off on the same court as Legette-Jack. But this time, she’ll be the opposing coach instead of an opposing player. Either way, he still sees the same person in Legette-Jack now as when he recruited her to UVA over 30 years ago.

“She was the same as a player as she is now. High energy, really active, really skilled, and just played really hard. Really competitive kid,” Auriemma said. “That’s the personality she has as a player and that’s the personality she has today. She was really highly recruited coming out of high school and I never did get the opportunity to coach her but I stayed in touch with her and I just really like her as a person, I really do.”

Now, Legette-Jack and her team have reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament, for the second year in a row after making the Sweet 16 last year. This time, they will face Auriemma and the Huskies.

While she has made sure to instill plenty of respect in her players for UConn, Legette-Jack also wants to make sure they aren’t in awe of their opponents once the ball goes up on Sunday.

“We’re going to always have two things we’re dealing with called courage and fear. And whatever you do something for the first time, whether you’re an adult or a kid, you’re going to have fear a lot because you care so much about the success you’re trying to get,” she said. “But then courage comes in. I ask our players every day to handle both of them but when you come out of that locker room, let courage win.”

Even though it’s been decades since Auriemma recruited her as a player, Legette-Jack feels the need to prove to him that he made the right choice by pursuing her, even if she didn’t commit to him in the end.

“In order for him to think he did a good job of recruiting me, I have to give him my best effort,” Legette-Jack said. “And we’re going to be as prepared as we can against the best team, best coach in the country. I think that they are a team in position to win it. But they have to go through Buffalo.”

She paused for a second.

“Oh god,” she added.



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