HARTFORD, Conn. _ With UConn set to face Notre Dame once again in the NCAA Tournament Final Four, coaches Geno Auriemma and Muffet McGraw are at it again.
The latest scrap in a decades-long rivalry surrounded the hiring of assistant coaches. After McGraw told ThinkProgress that she didn't plan to hire men to work on her staff, Auriemma questioned the wisdom of that approach and wondered why McGraw had felt the need to speak publicly about it.
"Muffet is entitled to hire anybody she wants," Auriemma said. "I don't know why she feels the need to make a statement about it. I've never hired a guy as one of my assistants either. I'm not going to make a statement about it."
In a vacuum, that comment might not have meant much. But given Auriemma and McGraw's testy history, it seemed to enforce that these two coaches don't much like each other.
"We don't have a relationship," McGraw said in 2014, just before UConn and Notre Dame met in that year's national title game. "I think that got lost. When we were in the same conference, I think there was a modicum of it, but I think after beating them and not feeling any respect from that, we lost something."
Ahead of the 50th career matchup between the two coaches, here is a history of the simmering tension between Auriemma's program and McGraw's.
