Earlier this month, Mike Tomlin stepped down from his plum job as head coach of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers after 19 seasons, ready to take a break at age 53.

Geno Auriemma hasn’t been unemployed in more than double that period of time. He is, after all, in his 41st season as the head coach of the UConn women’s basketball team, and he turns 72 in March.

He was asked, indirectly, Thursday night after No. 1 UConn blew out another conference opponent – this time, Georgetown – to move to 20-0 (10-0 Big East) how much longer he envisioned staying in his job.

Auriemma gave a long, thoughtful response. But the short answer? He has no plans to step away and believes he has tailored his methods to the evolution of the women's game.

“You do get to a point in time when both you and the people you work for kind of sense that you need to go in a different direction. And I get all that,” Auriemma said. “But for me, I've tried to stay the same but adapt to the new environment without giving away a lot of myself.

“And the results have been positive. The players respond in a way that I want them to respond, in a way that makes them successful. So, if I can keep being me and doing it the way I like to do it, but in a way that makes them respond positively to what I'm doing, I can do this for as long as I can.”

Auriemma is the most successful basketball coach in NCAA Division I history among coaches of both men and women. His record entering the Huskies’ game on Saturday at Seton Hall is 1,270-165 (.885), giving him the most victories of any coach. Among those losses, 39 of them came in his first three seasons on the job.

His teams have won 12 national titles and gone undefeated six times. Their record in 36 NCAA Tournament appearances is 142-24.

The great John Wooden is next on the list with 10 NCAA titles at UCLA.

Auriemma has nine Associated Press Coach of the Year and 19 conference Coach of the Year titles – and the case could be made that he deserved more honors.

Auriemma’s success has increased the pressure on him to win. And he has learned to deal with it.

“The longevity thing is, I think, managing the stress that you put on yourself and managing the expectations that you have yourself,” he said. “And what that does to you is way harder than coaching your team and coaching your players to, you know, how to play defense, how to run a play to get a bucket. ... Those things are real, real easy.

“It's managing the expectations that come with coaching at Connecticut, where undefeated seasons are the standard. That is probably the hardest thing that there is to manage. ... I think I've gotten to the point, you know, where I don't feel like a great year is us being undefeated and winning the national championship. Even though that's kind of what the expectation is.

“It'll drive you crazy if you can only have that because it's so hard to do that.”

For all the expectations that come with the job, indications are he has softened through the years. That comes from Napheesa Collier, who returned to UConn on Jan. 15 as the school celebrated the 10th anniversary of the 2015 and 2016 championship teams. Collier was a freshman on the latter team.

She said she attended the shootaround in advance of that night’s game against Villanova and saw the Auriemma she knew, but anecdotally has heard about a newer and softer Geno.

“It was a tough practice today,” Collier told FS1 in an interview during the game. “They did get in trouble, but I see him softening in areas. Like we couldn't show tattoos, we couldn't have colored hair. They don't have to dress up for games. Even if it was snowing – three feet of snow – we had to wear pantyhose down walking from our apartment.

“Each generation says -- like Sue [Bird] and Diana [Taurasi] were telling us the same thing: ‘You know he was way harder on us than he was on you guys.’ We’re seeing it through their eyes now.”

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