UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma signs 5-year contract extension through April 2029

UConn women’s basketball announced a five-year contract extension for coach Geno Auriemma on Tuesday that will keep the Huskies’ legend in Storrs through April 2029.

Auriemma’s deal, valued at $18.7 million over its life, will make him the highest-paid college women’s basketball coach in the country in 2024-25. He will make a total of $3.34 million next season, surpassing LSU head coach Kim Mulkey who made $3.26 million in 2023-24. Auriemma’s base salary of $400,000 will increase by $200,000 annually.

“I never said I was gonna retire. Everybody else wanted me to retire and I wasn’t quite ready to do that,” Auriemma said at the UConn Coaches Road Show on Tuesday. “I think every coach here probably at some point feels like obviously there’s an end to this … But in the meantime there’s a lot of kids that come to our school and I don’t care what anybody says, you know, they come to play for us.

“We buy into them, they buy into us. And so, what ends up happening is you keep getting these kids that you feel like, I think I want to be around this kid for a couple years.”

Auriemma is entering his 40th season at UConn poised to become the winningest coach in college basketball history after record holder Tara VanDerveer’s retirement after the 2023-24 season. His 11 national championship and 23 Final Four appearances are both records across both men’s and women’s college basketball, and UConn holds the two longest winning streaks in the sport’s history. The Huskies legend was inducted in the the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2006 and had been the Naismith National Coach of the Year eight times.