It’s the 2025 national title game for women’s college basketball in Tampa, Florida, and Geno Auriemma is not happy about his star player’s defense. His UConn Huskies are seeking their record 12th crown against Dawn Staley’s South Carolina, a program that’s rising in the sport and threatening Connecticut's throne.
“Paige,” Auriemma calls out to All-American senior Paige Bueckers. “Put a (expletive) hand up. It’s the (expletive) national championship game here, man.”
UConn went on to win that game in dominant fashion, 82-59, capping off an accomplished college career for Bueckers as she, Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong and company delivered the Huskies their first national championship since 2016, restoring the signature program in women’s college basketball
back to the mountaintop of the sport.
But that moment in the game is also emblematic of something else: the demands of Auriemma, what it takes to play at UConn and what he requires of his players as he has built the most iconic powerhouse in the sport.
It’s also the opening scene of a three-part docuseries that will debut on Apple TV on Friday, Aug. 21 titled “The Dynasty: UConn Huskies.”
Executive produced and co-directed by Matthew Hamachek and Erica Sashin, the film goes inside the most successful program in the history of women’s basketball, how Auriemma built it from the ground up, the culture he instilled, and dives deep into the stories behind the team’s rivalries, championships and legendary players.
Sashin has made documentaries about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, billionaire Rupert Murdoch and magician David Blaine. Among other credits, Hamachek has a bit more of a background in sports, having directed the 10-episode mini series about the New England Patriots for Apple TV and a two-part documentary on Tiger Woods for HBO.
Speaking with USA TODAY Sports earlier this week, Hamachek says he didn’t know much about UConn, Auriemma or any of the great players the Huskies had produced before embarking on this project.
“I think that gives you a little bit of perspective as a storyteller. It allows you to focus more on finding the things that make these extraordinarily talented people very human,” Hamachek told USA TODAY Sports. “Geno talks about the fear of failure, about not being mentally tough enough. I think we've all at times sort of grappled with that.
“They are these larger-than-life figures and it's very easy to dismiss what they're going through as something that you can't relate to. What we focused on with this one was, what makes these people relatable? And then we sort of investigate what made this program tick, what made all of these people tick.”
Among those who participated in sit-down interviews for the series include a who’s-who of UConn greats such as Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Shea Ralph, Maya Moore, Swin Cash, Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong, Jennifer Rizzotti and Breanna Stewart, as well as Auriemma and Bueckers. Others interviewed for the series include Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, former UConn men’s coach Jim Calhoun, Auriemma’s longtime assistant Chris Dailey, Pat Summitt’s top assistant Mickie DeMoss, and journalists Sally Jenkins, Jackie MacMullan, Jeff Goldberg and Alexa Phillippou.
Minutes into the first episode, Breanna Stewart says, “I miss the four years that I was at UConn, but I don’t wish to go back.”
There’s then a hard cut to Auriemma talking to players at a practice, saying, “Do you understand the meaning — the (expletive) meaning — of mental toughness?”
And then Sue Bird: “It has to be us against (Auriemma). You won’t survive if you don’t figure that out.”
And then Diana Taurasi: “He starts to tighten those screws and I’m like, ‘Yeah. This is what I want to feel. This is the energy I need.’”
And then Tamika Williams: “He challenged our heart. He challenged us to compete. I think that’s why I fell in love with Geno.”
That sets the tone for the title of the first episode, “Fear of Failure,” which is mostly focused on Auriemma’s journey to becoming the head coach at UConn, the environment he created and how it produced champions, going through his beginnings as a high school assistant coach all the way through the late 1990s. It touches on Auriemma recruiting Lobo, studying the triangle offense under Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, how he butted heads with UConn men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun, and his first championship in 1995.
“A really fascinating thing with Geno, the thing that he coaches out of everybody that is part of his team is this fear of failure, but that's something that he has for himself. He has this incredible imposter syndrome,” Hamachek said. “He talks about this idea that he realized that if he could just be better than somebody at something, if he could beat them at something, that is what let him feel like he belonged.”
Episode 2, “The Dynasty,” is centered on the program’s transformation into a behemoth. It’s highlighted by Auriemma’s rivalry with Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, a heralded recruiting class led by Sue Bird and how they clashed with veterans like Shea Ralph, how Auriemma’s family immigrated from Italy to the U.S. when he was 7, the arrival of Diana Taurasi, and how Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart kept the machine running.
Hamachek says that interviews with Ralph and Taurasi really stood out.
“Shea played with an intensity that I don't think I could think of a comparison of another athlete. She was there for this incredible period of time,” Hamachek said. “Having sat across from Tom Brady and other great athletes, nobody was as intimidating as Diana Taurasi. You can just tell she looks right through you. She looks like she would do anything to win at all times. It was so impressive to sit across from her.”
The final episode, “Breaking Point,” is often told through the lens of Paige Bueckers as it details her hype, her potential, the expectations placed on her, her injuries and battles, and how she eventually ended UConn’s national championship drought. Filmmakers arrived onto UConn’s campus midway through the 2024-25 season in January and followed the Huskies closely through their national title win over South Carolina.
“I really wanted to highlight how much each of these players had to sacrifice along the way, what they had to go through physically, mentally, everything in order to get there,” Hamachek said. “As we start filming, that team finds a way to turn itself around. None of us understood what had gone on and why that had happened. And so that was a really interesting thing, where slowly but surely, as we started to talk and do interviews with the players… Geno took some pretty drastic measures in order to sort of snap (Bueckers) out of it, or whatever you want to call it, and it was brutal.”
Filmmakers captured pivotal moments in that season, like how Auriemma challenged Bueckers after UConn’s loss to Tennessee in front of the team during a film session. In the documentary, Bueckers called it “devastating” and questioned if she still wanted to be at UConn.
“I took a risk,” Auriemma says. “(Bueckers) is either going to quit or she’s going to change. So I tried to hurt her like losing hurts.”
“It was very awkward to be in there,” Sarah Strong, then a freshman, says in the third episode. “I wasn’t expecting him to attack Paige like that. He was just yelling at her and, I don’t know, just saying really hurtful things to her. It was really shocking to me.”
But what followed was a players-only meeting with Bueckers leading it. Then the Huskies had a dominant road win over South Carolina and the Huskies never lost another game for the rest of the season.
What Hamachek hopes people take away from the docuseries is how difficult it is to achieve high levels of success and what some people go through to get there.
“Each of the people that are in this story has sacrificed and given up things to accomplish greatness,” Hamachek said. “In order to obtain greatness, you have to really sacrifice a lot, and the grit and intensity with which all of these incredible athletes dig deep with is remarkable. It was really inspiring for me as somebody who came in not really knowing all that much about women's basketball.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Apple TV series examines Geno Auriemma’s ‘fear of failure’ at UConn
