"You and I both know we aren't playing by the same rules": When Tennessee legend Pat Summitt reflected on her rivalry with UConn's Geno Auriemma

UConn coach Geno Auriemma won his 12th national championship in April to extend his lead as the most successful women's college basketball coach of all time. Just behind him is former Tennessee Volunteers coach Pat Summitt, who won eight national championships in her 38-year career at the helm.

Summitt and Auriemma shared an intense rivalry as they battled for college basketball supremacy. The rivalry spilled off the court and in her book, "Sum It Up," released in 2013, the former Vols coach detailed how her relationship with the Huskies coach deteriorated to the point that the UConn versus Tennessee series was canceled.

"My home phone rang," Summitt wrote. "It was Geno. In retrospect, that was the moment when friendship and alliance should have prevailed. Each of us should have said, "Let's talk this through and solve this. What are your concerns?" But we had long passed the point of being able to talk that way. Instead, it was hostile and defensive from the start. "Geno made an opening remark. 'Geno, you and I both know we aren't playing by the same rules,' I said. The conversation only lasted a minute or so more. It mainly consisted of him saying that he hoped to see us in the NCAA tournament, so "I can kick your ass." But we never played again."

When Geno Auriemma credited Pat Summitt with excellence

Between them, Geno Auriemma and Pat Summitt won 20 national championships, far ahead of their peers and during a news conference in 2023, the UConn Huskies coach credited the former Tennessee Volunteers coach with helping to elevate his team to new levels.

"We helped each other," Auriemma said. "Coaching against Pat and having Pat in the league, or in the world of women's basketball was like Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski and John Wooden. "It was probably the first and only classic women's basketball rivalry on the level of North Carolina and Duke ... Steelers-Cowboys, and Yankees-Red Sox, and Auburn-Alabama, and right there, UConn-Tennessee women's basketball. I mean to be put in that context with those other rivalries ... it became something really special."

Auriemma won his first national title in 1995 by beating Summitt's Tennessee and won five of their six Final Four clashes. By the time Summitt retired in 2012, she was the most successful women's college basketball coach with eight national titles but since then, Auriemma has won five more titles to overtake her and is showing no signs of retiring after ending his nine-year natty drought in April.

Dawn Staley, Geno Auriemma, or Kim Mulkey - who is NCAAW's highest-paid coach? Find out here

Edited by Krutik Jain