It's Easy For Geno Auriemma To Get To Root Of Coach K's Success

They are sons of immigrants. One's Italian surname ends with a familiar vowel. The other's Polish name ends with an equally familiar "ski." Forever sons of immigrants, and they embrace that birthright with all their being.

They, too, are the godfathers of college and USA basketball. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and UConn women's coach Geno Auriemma are revered and envied, placed on the ultimate treadmill where even the greatest NCAA and Olympic championships are met with the stern notion they have merely broken even.

As Krzyzewski landed his historic 1,000th college victory Sunday against St. John's at Madison Square Garden, Auriemma was notching No. 897 in Cincinnati. And while the Y chromosome may separate their players and 113 victories separate their resumes, Auriemma found a common thread in their pursuits of coaching immortality.

Their mothers.

Emily Krzyzewski and Marsiella Auriemma.

"Listening to Mike talk all these years, whenever I've had an opportunity to be around him, he references his mom a lot," Auriemma said. "Coach K is going to go down as a great team-builder. That's how I see Mike, as a great, great team-builder. It's a reflection of going to West Point, obviously, using a lot of the methods they use there.

"The similarity I see is the huge influence my mom had on me and his mom had on him. It has given us a sense of compassion for people. From an X's and O's standpoint, I don't think coaches are that much different, separating one from another at the highest level. But in terms of building teams and growing young men, I don't know that anybody has done it better than he has."

Krzyzewski, 67, becomes the first Division I men's coach to reach 1,000 victories. There was a time before expanded schedules added more W's, before advanced medicine and multi-million dollar contracts led to longer careers, when 1,000 seemed impossible.

"I think Mike is looked upon as the best coach in modern basketball," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, second behind Coach K with 962 victories, told Syracuse.com columnist Bud Poliquin. "John Wooden is in a class by himself. I think everybody realizes that. But I think it's understood that Mike is the best coach other than John Wooden to coach basketball. I think that's clear. I think everybody believes that. He's recognized as the face of college basketball."

"If John Wooden was the coach of that generation, Mike might be the coach of our generation," Auriemma said. "Very rarely has there been the perfect coach at the perfect place to do as close a perfect job as you can for as long as he has done it. Add in all his USA Basketball stuff, to sustain it for this long, I think he represents the way every coach would want to do it if they could."

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It's Easy For Geno Auriemma To Get To Root Of Coach K's Success