For 38 Years at UConn, Chris Dailey Has Been the Yin to Geno’s Yang

STORRS, Conn. — Chris Dailey is a girl of routine.

She runs practices like clockwork. She delivers her locker room pep talks with effectivity. And he or she adheres to a strict schedule within the morning earlier than heading to the College of Connecticut: She will get up, works out and goes to Panera Bread.

“It’s slightly embarrassing — I used to get their iced tea however I don’t actually prefer it, so now I make my very own and I simply go there as a result of I like their cups, and I’ve individuals there that I discuss to,” Dailey, 63, stated just lately, including in a near-whisper: “I actually simply get the ice there.”

On recreation days, the coach whom gamers name “C.D.” fills her cup with a particular deal with: Eating regimen Coke. She’ll convey it together with her onto the court docket and tape over the model’s identify “so we don’t get in bother,” she stated.

For 38 years, Dailey’s routines have saved the Connecticut girls’s basketball program operating at full steam. She is the yin to Coach Geno Auriemma’s yang, the regular voice to his occasional courtside outbursts, the construction to his extra fluid strategy. The 2 couldn’t be extra completely different — he arrives 5 minutes earlier than a airplane is scheduled to take off, she prefers to not journey with him anymore — however collectively, they’ve reworked the Connecticut program, and with it, girls’s basketball at giant.

“The best way that we’re, the one unit that we’re, that’s all C.D.,” stated the sophomore guard Caroline Ducharme. “She’s the chief in that and I believe an enormous motive that UConn has the picture that it has.”

Auriemma employed Dailey as an assistant coach in 1985, as quickly as he arrived in Storrs, and promoted her to affiliate head coach in 1988, a task she has stuffed ever since, with a deal with put up gamers, teachers and total recruitment. Collectively, Auriemma and Dailey have coached greater than 40 all-American gamers, reached 22 Closing Fours, gained 11 championships, recorded six good seasons (together with an 111-game successful streak) and despatched practically 40 girls to the W.N.B.A., together with Rebecca Lobo, Sue Hen, Diana Taurasi, Breanna Stewart, Swin Money and Maya Moore.

The numbers might be dizzying.

“Once I hear the numbers, I believe, that’s unbelievable, and if I didn’t dwell it, I may not consider it,” Dailey stated.

On Saturday, Connecticut will make its twenty ninth consecutive look within the N.C.A.A. match’s spherical of 16 after one of the troublesome seasons in program historical past. Accidents, sickness and missed video games — together with by Auriemma and Dailey — adopted the Huskies all yr, proper as much as their Massive East match title earlier this month. Dailey herself was taken off the court docket in a stretcher after collapsing throughout a recreation in November.

“We inform the children, there aren’t any dangerous groups left, solely good groups are remaining, and we have now to play properly with a view to advance,” Dailey stated. “If we do this, then we give ourselves an opportunity.”

Dailey has been a part of a “good staff” for longer than lots of her gamers have been alive. She performed basketball in highschool in New Brunswick, N.J., after which at Rutgers, the place she gained a nationwide championship. She went on to teach as an assistant at Cornell and Rutgers earlier than arriving at Connecticut.

However the Auriemma-Dailey staff was by no means a positive factor. In truth, Dailey didn’t know if she would make it by the primary summer time coaching camp. However, a decade in, they gained their first championship title, defeating the Tennessee Woman Vols in 1995. A brand new chapter in girls’s basketball was born.

After the Huskies’ win, Mickie DeMoss, a good friend and assistant coach for Tennessee, pulled Dailey apart to inform her that Tennessee must begin taking part in basketball in a different way now.

“I stated to Geno, ‘You’re not going to consider this — Tennessee goes to vary their fashion of play due to us,’” Dailey stated. “We didn’t need to be only a one-hit surprise. That subsequent yr, I felt extra stress when it comes to recruiting and eager to win. We needed to maintain it.”

Dailey stated Auriemma absorbs that stress on behalf of the staff. She tries so as to add a little bit of levity the place she will; jokes and sarcasm run deep on the teaching bench, particularly amongst basketball’s odd couple.

“C.D. is certainly all the time taking good care of us, making actions for us, taking us to pedicures,” stated Dorka Juhász, a ahead who transferred to Connecticut from Ohio State. “We’re school youngsters, we’re doing a variety of basketball, but additionally, you recognize, she’s attempting to stability it to see the world slightly bit.”

That stability generally swings the opposite approach.

Asjha Jones, who performed at UConn from 1998 by 2002, with the likes of Hen and Money, remembered one notably grueling observe after “a bunch of us saved mishandling the ball.” Dailey lined up her put up gamers and began throwing “bullets at us, throwing them to the sky, drilling at us,” Jones stated. “She takes it personally, we’re a mirrored image of her.

“Trying again, you’re like, rattling,” Jones continued with amusing. “However guess what: We didn’t drop any extra passes that yr.”

Dailey recruited Jones out of highschool, and the 2 New Jersey natives hit it off instantly.

“She was one of many few individuals who understood me and knew how one can discuss to me,” stated Jones, a two-time W.N.B.A. All-Star who’s now the director of basketball technique for the Portland Path Blazers. “She didn’t sugarcoat something, didn’t give me any fluff.”

Dailey and Auriemma have fallen into what Dailey calls a “divorced mother and father” rhythm. If a participant doesn’t obtain the reply they’re searching for from one among them, they’ll go to the opposite coach. However one factor is constant: They each maintain themselves and the Huskies program to a excessive customary.

“I’ve all the time appreciated the truth that he’s allowed me possession of this program and appreciated how he will get to his spot,” Dailey stated of Auriemma.

Auriemma, for his half, is aware of his staff is in good fingers.

“It’s distinctive that she’s capable of spend that a lot time right here and have the ability to put her stamp on this system in each approach,” he stated, including that, if he left for the summer time, the staff could be higher organized and “issues could be in a significantly better place if she was in cost.”

Dailey, who was inducted into the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2018, is aware of that she is “nearer to the top than I’m to the start,” however she’s not achieved together with her routines but. Perhaps that’s when every thing that this system has achieved will sink in.

“I don’t suppose you ever actually take into consideration legacy till it’s over,” she stated. “I don’t suppose I’ll take into consideration that till I’m retired — and I nonetheless have just a few good years left in me.”

Auriemma and Dailey will each know when it’s time, “whether or not it’s collectively or separate — we’re definitely not twins,” Dailey stated. “It will be in some methods becoming for us to depart collectively, however we’re definitely two people which have our personal minds and conditions.”

Dailey was hesitant to say whether or not she would step into the function if Auriemma have been to step down first — “I don’t take into consideration that different stuff” — however stated she didn’t see that occuring.

“Circumstances have loads to do with a variety of issues,” she stated. “Proper now, we’re excited concerning the future.”