Rebecca Lobo still has the handwritten letters she received from UConn coaches Geno Auriemma and Chris Dailey 35 years ago when they were recruiting her as one of the top high school players in the country. Before email and texts and limits on phone calls, it was the only way for coaches to talk to recruits. "That's how it used to be done.
Before they could call you, they could correspond with you," said Lobo, now an ESPN analyst but back then the storied program's first national recruit. "In my basement, I have 20 letters that coach wrote me in the late '80s and early '90s. After they'd come watch me play, they'd write, 'I enjoyed watching you play.
Don't get frustrated with the refs. You'll get fouled a lot.'" Those letters are the only ones that Lobo saved because of the meaning they have to her.
While communication methods have changed, the sentiments and the connection that Auriemma and Dailey have with their players hasn't. Dozens of former players are expected to be on campus Wednesday night when No. 2 UConn plays Farleigh Dickinson.
It will be Auriemma's first chance to set college basketball's career wins record, breaking a tie with retired Stanford great Tara VanDerveer at 1,216 victories. The Hall of Fame coach says he never dreamed that he and Dailey would still be at UConn after four decades together, having built the the greatest program in the history of women's basketball. "I don't think anybody goes into anything thinking that they're going to spend 40 years .
