April 02--Geno Auriemma can be considered an authority on college basketball.
As the coach of the women's basketball team at Connecticut the last 30 seasons, Auriemma has accumulated 915 wins, including nine national titles.
So we might want to listen to his opinion on the state of college basketball, even if he's talking talking about the men's game.
"I think the game is a joke. It really is," Auriemma said of NCAA men's basketball Wednesday during the women's Final Four teleconferences. "I don't coach it. I don't play it, so I don't understand all the ins and outs of it. But as a spectator, forget that I'm a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it's a joke.
"There's only like 10 teams, you know, out of 25, that actually play the kind of game of basketball that you'd like to watch. Every coach will tell you that there's 90 million reasons for it."
Auriemma pointed to the lack of scoring in both men's and women's college basketball, with the men averaging 67.8 points a game and the women 69.5 so far during this year's tournament.
"The bottom line is that nobody can score, and they'll tell you it's because of great defense, great scouting, a lot of teamwork, nonsense, nonsense," Auriemma said. "College men's basketball is so far behind the times it's unbelievable. I mean women's basketball is behind the times. Men's basketball is even further behind the times. Every other major sport in the world has taken steps to help people be better on the offensive end of the floor."
Auriemma's Huskies don't seem to be part of the problem, scoring 89.7 points a game. Women's basketball has a 30-second shot clock, while the men get 35 seconds. There's a movement among some coaches to lower the men's clock to 30 seconds as well.
Something tells me that Geno Auriemma, the basketball fan, would support such a move.
"We're fighting for the entertainment dollar, here, and I have to tell you it's not entertainment from a fan's standpoint," he said of the men's game.
"I'm talking as a fan, not as Geno Auriemma, the basketball coach."
