Several years ago I was talking with Geno Auriemma after a game in Hartford in general terms about recruiting when he said - and I am paraphrasing a bit "we tend to recruit a small number of players and the players know we are only recruiting a small number of players." It was so simple yet incredible effective.

The end result is usually pretty impressive like the time UConn signed Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones, Keirsten Walters and Tamika Williams or more recently when Tina Charles and Maya Moore committed in consecutive years or the recent commitments from the top-ranked senior (Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis) and junior (Breanna Stewart) in the country. It also leads to situations when the Huskies land just one kid as they did in between the Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi classes and did a couple years back when Kelly Faris was the only recruit to sign with the Huskies. UConn wanted a post player to take over when Tina Charles graduated but zeroed in on a select few which they failed to get until Stefanie Dolson signed with the Huskies. Players like Kelsey Bone and Chelsey Lee opted to head elsewhere but even when that was happening, the UConn staff was not about to recruit a big kid just for the sake of it. Now they have a player like Dolson is seemingly is improving with each passing day. Yes, UConn's selective style of recruiting does leave holes every once in a while but has also resulted in the compilation of some of the sport's best teams.

In the press conference following Saturday's win over DePaul, Auriemma provided some insight into how the Huskies recruit and it was pretty captivating stuff.

"What's happened in the AAU world, these kids don't play to win," Auriemma said. "They just play to play. They show up in a tournament on a Friday night, play a couple games. Show up on Saturday, play four or five games. Show up Sunday and you play all morning maybe and let's go do it again next weekend. The difference is when you watched Maya played is Maya played to win every game. She tried to win every possession. It sticks out so obviously because everybody else is just running up and down the floor waiting for Sunday to they can get in their van, stop at McDonald's and she never played like that. Neither kid Kelly Faris, neither did Tiffany Hayes. I saw Tiffany Hayes at the Tournament of Champions in Arizona. The other team tied the score with five seconds left and I just smiled and said they are going to throw it to her and she is going to score and they are going to win. That is exactly what they did. You try to find those kids who aren't just running up and down and playing, who are trying to win all summer long, 90 games - however many games they are trying to go 90-0. Not every kid wants to do that, Maya does. Hopefully we keep recruiting kids who are like that.

"I am at a age at my life now that I say 'I want you to go (pointing in a straight line) and do that' and a kid says 'why?' then I don't want you on my team. There are a lot of kids coming out of high school today that you have to explain to them why you want things done and I am not in the mood to explain why I want things done. So if I recruit you and say this is what I want you to do, then you just do it. If you are the kind of kid who I watch you play in high school and you don't, then I don't think you are going to do it for me."

Auriemma has said in the past he looks for certain things when he sees a kid play and it has little to do with the way they fill up a box score. Does a kid compete regardless of the score, how do they interact with their teammates, what do they do when the ball is not in their hands. Case in point is a story he told in Saturday's press conference about a high school game he went to see earlier this season.

"This is the thing I don't understand. Doug (Bruno, DePaul's head coach) was there and we sat there was watched the game. We watched the kids play. We looked at each and said 'they all know we are here.' There is nobody sitting in these bleachers but us and these guys are dogging it. I am saying 'if you are not going to play really well now with us two sitting in the stands, when are you going to play hard?' I think the good coaches, we are constantly looking for kids who you say 'go' and they go. I think that's why we win all the time. These other coaches, I think they have to take those chances. If I was trying to build a program here or if I was trying to get to the level we are at right now, I would probably take more chances on kids and I would probably fail more often than not.

"People think recruiting is easy for us. Recruiting is harder for us than it is for anyone else. There are only five kids in America who can play for you. When you think about it. You can’t just go to an AAU tournament and go 1-2-3-4-5 and count 25 kids and go, ‘Yeah, they are on our list.’

Auriemma is blessed to have a staff who share his recruiting philosophies. Associate head coach Chris Dailey was recently named one of the top five college recruiters (regardless of sport) in an ESPN the Magazine piece. Shea Ralph played at UConn so she obviously knows what Auriemma and Dailey are looking for and it did not take second-year assistant coach Marisa Moseley to figure things out.

"Marisa Moseley found that out three days after she got hired at Connecticut," Auriemma said. "She was sitting there next to CD (Dailey) and she goes, ‘That kid right there, we’re not recruiting her, huh?’ and CD goes, ‘Nope.’ She goes ‘How about that kid? We aren’t recruiting her either, huh? Nope.' Then she watches a little more and she goes, ‘That kid right there. We are recruiting her, huh?’ Chris goes, ‘Yeah.’ You learn that the kind of kids winning coaches want or that winning programs want. They stand out and not because of how many points they score. That is not important. So the more of those kids you can get on your team, the more opportunities we can play like we played today or last Monday.

"You saw all the good stuff Kelly Faris did today. Well some people when she was in high school only saw the Kelly Faris that we saw during those three games where she was horrible. So that is what they saw. They thought ‘So that is what that kid is going to be.’ I’m like OK, but I see something different. She is good. She is a winner."