Staley and Auriemma Share Philly-Space Roots and Quest for One other Title

At first look, there isn’t a Philadelphia-area connection. It’s simply pure girls’s school basketball dominance. South Carolina was ranked No. 1 for the complete season underneath head coach Daybreak Staley. It’s the primary time a girls’s basketball staff didn’t drop from the highest spot since 2017.

Then there’s UConn. The winningest school basketball program of all time with a file 11 NCAA Division I Nationwide Championships led by head coach Geno Auriemma. 

The Gamecocks enter March Insanity with one of the best odds to win the Nationwide Championship at PA sports activities betting apps adopted by the Huskies.

However earlier than they reached the height of faculty basketball, they began constructing their foundations within the Philadelphia space.

Daybreak Staley doesn’t cry, she simply wins

Staley was born within the tasks of North Philadelphia on the nook of Diamond Avenue and twenty fifth Avenue. She attended Murrell Dobbins Tech Excessive College in Philadelphia and was USA At present’s Nationwide Excessive College Participant of the Yr as a senior.

Staley went to the College of Virginia the place she led the Cavaliers to 3 Ultimate Fours and one Nationwide Championship sport look. She went on to play eight seasons within the WNBA.

In 2017, the road was renamed Daybreak Staley Lane. How did she get a avenue named after her? A basketball profession that put her within the Girls’s Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2012 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2013. 

Some highlights of Stayley’s Corridor of Fame Profession:

• • 3 Olympic Gold medals as a participant (96, 2000, 2004)

• 1 Olympic Gold medal as a Coach (2020)
• 6 time WNBA All-Star
• Nationwide Coach of the Yr (2020)
• South Carolina teaching file: 331-103 (.763) in 13 seasons
• Temple College, head coach, 2000-08 172-80 (.683) in eight seasons. 4 Atlantic 10 Event titles.

Earlier than South Carolina performed Mississippi State within the 2017 Nationwide Championship, she was requested if she would cry if the Gamcocks gained. Styaley responded:

“I don’t cry,” she had mentioned. “I’m from North Philly.”

Geno Auriemma – from Norristown to the Naismith Corridor of Fame

Auriemma was born in Montella, Italy in 1954 and his household immigrated to Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1961. He performed highschool basketball at Bishop Kenrick and the primary ideas of a training profession started to kind as a result of affect of Kenrick coach Buddy Gardler.

“He was a tough sort of man,” Auriemma mentioned recalling Gardler who handed away in 2018. “A ‘my approach or the freeway’ sort of man. Very, very stern sort of strategy, the place every part was going to be performed precisely proper, the way in which he wished it to be performed. There was no room for any deviation. Some individuals thrived in that sort of surroundings. I used to be superb with that.”

Auriemma began his teaching profession at West Chester State College, an assistant at St. Joseph’s College, then returned to Bishop Kenrick as an assistant with the boys’ basketball staff. In 1981 he took an assistant teaching place with the College of Virginia Cavaliers girls’s staff and inside a couple of years, he recruited six All Individuals.

The College of Connecticut employed Auriemma to move its girls’s basketball staff in August 1985. They solely had one profitable season of their historical past and would end 12-15 in Auriemma’s first season in Storrs. It was his solely dropping season. Auriemma boasts the highest profitable proportion (.885) amongst NCAA basketball coaches (any stage, males’s or girls’s) and was the quickest coach to 800, 900, 1,000 and 1,100 wins.

Auriemma was enshrined within the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2006. He has gained three gold medals as a coach of the ladies’s Olympic basketball staff.

2022 NCAA Girls’s Basketball Event odds

Odds to win the Girls’s NCAA Championship

(Odds at FanDuel PA Sportsbook as of March 15)

• South Carolina +185
• UConn +350
• Stanford +480
• North Carolina State +1100
• Full odds listed on the app

At Factors Guess sportsbook in Pennsylvania, Nationwide Championship futures look a bit totally different. South Carolina is +200, adopted by Stanford +425, UConn +450, and NC State +750.

South Carolina beat UConn 73-57 on Nov. 2021. Aliyah Boston led the Gamecocks with  22 factors and 15 rebounds. Paige Bueckers had 19 factors to steer UConn.

UConn Girls’s Basketball NCAA Event betting preview

• 2021 Nationwide Participant of the Yr Paige Bueckers missed 19 this season for the Huskies with an anterior tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear. She returned on Feb. 25
• Common season file: 25- 5, Ranked No. 5
• Main scorers: Chrisyn Williams 14.6 ppg, Bueckers 14.3, Azzi Fudd 12.4
• UConn averages 74.8 ppg, and provides up 52.5 ppg

South Carolina Girls’s Basketball NCAA Event betting preview

• South Carolina was upset within the SEC championship sport by Kentucky. Dre’una Edwards hit a 3-pointer with 5 seconds left to place Kentucky forward 64-62 and s=give the Wildcats their first convention title in 40 years.
• Common season file: 29- 5, Ranked No. 1
• Main scorers: Aliyah Boston 16.8 ppg, Destanni Henderson 11.3 ppg, Zia Cooke 11.2
• South Carolina averages 71.3 ppg, and provides up 51.7 ppg

Lead picture Sean Rayford/AP