New docuseries explores UConn’s women’s basketball legacy
For 40 years, UConn women's basketball has been synonymous with one word: winning. And the Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma has spent four decades bringing people together and convincing them to sacrifice for something bigger than themselves. That's at the heart of the new Apple TV docuseries "The Dynasty: UConn Huskies". CNN's Coy Wire sat down with Auriemma and Emmy-winning filmmaker Matthew Hamachek to find out more.
Video Transcript
Much like the last two films that, or series that I did, one was about Tiger Woods and the other was about the Patriots, I really didn't know anything about the UConn women's basketball team before I started.
And what was so great about that is it becomes a process of discovery.
I got to meet Geno early on, as he talked about, and then started talking to him and his perspective- and the players and the rivals and sort of everybody in between.
And you just start to realize there's this incredible story beneath the surface here that's not just about a team that has won at an incredible clip for 40 years.
Coach, when you were approached about this opportunity to tell the story of your career, of your teams, of your program, what was most important to you?
To let everybody see how much people sacrificed to make this work, how much the players themselves gave of themselves to make the team better, gave up individual goals sometimes for the good of the team, how much time was spent on the court, how much time was spent off the court, that this didn't happen by accident.
You don't win this much for this long without great people doing amazing things.
So I wanted everybody to see that.
Matthew, your previous series, The Dynasty: New England Patriots, covered a 20-year run over 10 episodes.
Coach Auriemma's UConn dynasty is twice as long.
It's still going.
How painful was deciding what not to put in this series?
Finding things that make these stories universal, and if you focus on that, the decisions on what to cut and what not to, to leave in and things like that become a lot easier.
But, you know, it really helps when you have great characters like Coach Auriemma and, you know, Diana Taurasi and Paige Bueckers and all of them to focus on.
Because I think when people watch these things, they can see themselves in them.
Even though those characters are going through extraordinary circumstances, the emotions and the things that they're grappling with are very ordinary and universal to all of us.
But, but Matt, is that really true?
20 years and you squeeze 10 episodes, and you crammed 40 years into three episodes?
And you told me- Hey- "Oh, this is way better than the Patriots one.
Way better."
That's true.
I feel like that we got short-changed now You know why?
No.
I think, I think you should be happy.
That just means that you didn't have a bunch of cheating scandals and other big stories like that, that- that, you know, fill out 10 episodes.
Hey, that's, uh- So I think it's a good sign That's a good answer, Matthew.
You'd fit right in a locker room.
This is the kind of banter and, and ribbing that goes on.
Listen- How, how did you two work together in, in the filmmaking process?
Who was tougher during this process, Geno the coach or Matthew the filmmaker?
We both knew what we wanted.
I wanted my team to win.
I wanted my team to look and play like the best team in the country, and I needed to do what I needed to do to make that happen.
Matt wanted this to be the best piece that it could be, the best series that it could be, and he knew what he wanted to make that happen.
S- 90% of the time those two things were in perfect harmony.
The other 10%, you know, that's just normal, par for the course stuff.
But he is annoying, and, and once you take that for granted- I'm a pain in the butt you know, say, look, he's gonna be annoying.
He's gonna be annoying, so just deal with it.
