You know the Final Four is around the corner when Geno Auriemma is asked about his restaurant of preference on the pre-Final Four teleconference.

Things got a little more serious than having Auriemma comment on which St. Louis area Italian he would be frequenting when he arrives in town.

He was asked about the impact on the allegations of recruiting improprities against the Final Four-bound UConn men's program.

"It hasn't impacted our team because they know it's an issue that involves -- right now they've certainly heard about it on TV and they've certainly read about it
whenever they've read anything, online or not online," Auriemma said. "Our men's basketball program, they're not naive enough to not know what's going on in the
world. So I know they're aware of it. I haven't discussed it with them. Not one word. I know that it affects, obviously, the people that work here and
the University of Connecticut and all that, because it's a topic that from the first day that it came out to now hasn't gone away. And we probably know
that it won't until it's over. So our focus, with our players, is who is
playing next, who we have to prepare for. And we've kind of kept it at that and not anything else. That's it.

Then came the predictable, how is your relationship with the other Hall of Fame basket coach in Storrs.

Q: Following up on that, there's been some conversation over the years about your relationship with Coach Calhoun. How is it for two great national programs to co-exist in the same sport on the same campus?
COACH AURIEMMA: How is it?
Q. Yes, how does -- I know it's a very general question, but how does that work?
Because you're both so great, so well known nationally, such success, of course, on the same campus.
COACH AURIEMMA: It is kind of unusual in that respect. You know, you don't see that very often. I think you see it in some other schools maybe on the, let's say, football/men's basketball side, where you may have -- like Florida first where you've got a national championship football and a national championship men's basketball program.
So it does happen at other schools. So it's not unusual. It is unusual here at Connecticutbecause it's basketball and it's men's and women's basketball. And it draws so much attention during basketball season, and certainly NCAA tournament
time. And it's been great in the sense that our university has benefited so much from it.
So many things have happened on this campus since 1995 when we won our first national
championship that would never have happened had the two basketball programs not been as dominant as we've been for such a long period of time. And I think in anything, when you've got all that on a college campus, the excitement, the attention, the things that are said, the things that are written, the stuff you see on TV, all that gets magnified. And for the last 15 years we've managed to work it out and here we are, both two games away from winning another national championship."