It was a day Geno Auriemma thought would never come.

He remembers when weeks turned into months and ultimately years and the completion date of state of the art basketball arena he was promised would be built on the UConn campus kept getting pushed back. For years he was hearing that there would a practice facility.

Finally it all became a reality with a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday.



"I thought this was the day Gampel would open when I got the job," Auriemma said. "The way they talked about Gampel 'hey, we are going to open Gampel Pavilion.' I said 'when? Oh, next year, next month, next week.' So to think that we went to the (Greer) Field House to Gampel to this, if anybody told you we were going to be able to do this I would think they are smarter than I am because I didn't see it coming but it is at a time when it is supposed to be here, this is when it is supposed to be here with all the questions of where are you as a program, where are you there is no better statement to make that we are no retrenching, we are not feeling sorry for ourselves, we are building, we are going forward and this is a step in the right direction, We already get the best players and the best people and our job is to make them better and this is another way to make them better.

"Players have to make their class schedules around practice (now). Tuesdays and Thursdays you can only practice at this time because you have to share with the men and Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays you can only practice at certain times and kids are limited academically but now if we want to practice at 3 o'clock and the guys want to practice at 3 o'clock, not a problem. That allows us some more flexibility academically, kids what to go in the gym and work out well you can't because there are intramurals or you can't because there is a science fair, there are a lot of things that the building is used for and there is an academic center that we don't have. It just enhances their ability to be really, really good."