Geno Auriemma Heaps Praise On Caitlin Clark So She Won’t ‘Drop 50 On Us’

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UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma is no dummy. You don’t win 11 NCAA Division I national championships by accident.

That’s why after seeing the performance put on by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark against LSU in the Elite 8 he hilariously heaped praise on the Hawkeyes star in anticipation of their match-up next week.

“It’s pretty remarkable,” Auriemma told the media. “Next weekend should be just as much fun as this weekend. Yeah, I hope Caitlin Clark had a personal agenda against LSU. I know there’s nothing personal between me and her. I don’t need to be seeing her drop 50 on us next weekend, you know?

“I love her. I think she’s the best player. Forget I ever said Paige [Bueckers] is the best player in the country. I think she’s the best player of all time. I don’t know whoever said, that I said, that Paige is the best player in the country.”

Sorry, coach, but that horse is already out of the barn, on two fronts.

One, Geno Auriemma already said last week, “We have the best player in America. Just saying that because the numbers, in this world of analytics, the numbers say that she is. And the whole stat sheet say that she is. And everybody that watched knows it.”

Two, Caitlin Clark hasn’t forgotten that Auriemma didn’t really try to recruit her to play at UConn.

“Honestly, it was more I wanted them to recruit me to say I got recruited,” Clark told ESPN last month. “I loved UConn. I think they’re the coolest place on Earth, and I wanted to say I got recruited by them. They called my AAU coach a few times, but they never talked to my family and never talked to me.”

Auriemma will find out on Friday around 9 p.m. Eastern time inside the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland whether or not there really is “nothing personal between [him] and her.”