If Geno Auriemma had been commanding a room Thursday and not a computer screen, the room would have been silent.

Auriemma was talking about turning 18 and not being able to vote because he wasn't yet a United States citizen, but how he majored in political science at what is now West Chester University because he was fascinated with government and its process.

That's how Auriemma, the 66-year-old coach of the UConn women's basketball team, concluded Big East Conference Media Day on Thursday via Zoom video conference.

He urged people to vote on Tuesday, Election Day.

"No slogans, no buttons, no T-shirts, no signs on your lawn. Just show up Tuesday and do the right thing," Auriemma said.

The conversation started with UConn players Christyn Williams and Paige Bueckers, who earned preseason awards from the Big East and joined Auriemma on screen. Williams, from Little Rock, Ark., and Bueckers, from Hopkins, Minn., are voting in their first presidential elections and voted by absentee ballot.

Then Auriemma was asked what voting meant to him.

"I've kind of experienced it all from being a kid who's not a citizen ... to becoming a citizen, living through the '60s, experiencing my mother becoming a citizen — even though she can't read, she can't write, but she's a great American," said Auriemma, who arrived in the U.S. from Italy at the age of 7.

"And to be honest, I've never felt anything like I'm seeing and feeling in today's world. Never. Not ever at any time in my life have I been so disgusted with so much of what I see happening in the country. The pandemic is one of the least of our problems. There's a cure for the pandemic. It's out there. It's coming. I'm not sure there's a cure for some of the other stuff going on in this country. You can't make a vaccine for some of the nonsense that's been going on in this country. You can't."

Auriemma said it's the most angry he's been in his life. Never before has he had the emotional back-and-forth he's had with even his closest friends about the direction of the country.

"We, as coaches or teachers, whatever, we're always trying to tell people, 'Hey, listen, try to do the right thing. Try to do the right thing,'" Auriemma said. "... I believe it's when we went to West Point, when we took the team to West Point, a lot of times they talked about doing the hard right thing and not the easy wrong thing. I just think that right now there's just a lot of easy wrong being done.

"Why? It's just so easy to be angry, to be anti-humanity."

UConn won't practice Tuesday. Instead, Auriemma will have his players over for dinner. He's done that before, recalling the night his players were at his home when Barack Obama became the first Black president.

"It's very important to me because my grandmother went door-step to door-step to try to get people to vote back in the day," Williams said. "I feel like it's my duty to vote."

"It was really big for me. I just turned 18 last year so it was my first year I could vote," Bueckers said. "It was really big for me to use my platform and use the social media image that I have to try to get people to vote and I can't ask other people to do it if I don't do it myself. We can talk about change all we want, but until we take steps toward action it's not going to mean anything."

All-Big East

Williams was named Preseason Player of the Year and Bueckers Preseason Freshman of the Year, while fellow Huskies Evina Westbrook and Olivia Nelson-Ododa were named preseason all-stars. Also earning preseason All-Big East honors were Creighton's Temi Carda, DePaul's Lexi Held and Sonya Morris, Marquette's Selena Lott, Leilani Correa and Qadashah Hoppie of St. John's, Seton Hall's Desiree Elmore, Villanova's Maddy Siegrist and Xavier's A'riana Gray.

v.fulkerson@theday.com