In a week where one more win will allow him to tie Tennessee legend Pat Summitt for all-time victories, UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma spent time lauding Summitt, saying "she had a lot more restraint and a lot more sense than I do."

"That's probably what I miss about her," Auriemma said in a video conference. "She was always able to look past all the trivial stuff and concentrate on the big stuff and maybe someday I'll grow into that role."

Third-ranked UConn (6-0, 5-0) faces Big East Conference opponent Providence (5-6, 3-3) beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday at Gampel Pavilion (SNY). A UConn victory would give Auriemma, in his 36th season, 1,098 for his career, tying him with Summitt for second all-time behind Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer (1,104). VanDerveer broke Summitt's mark with her fifth victory this season, which came on Dec. 15.

Auriemma said that while it's only VanDerveer's mark that really matters, he believes him tying Summitt is noteworthy to women's basketball fans because of the once-storied rivalry between UConn and Tennessee.

Summitt, who died in 2016 at the age of 64 following a fight with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, won eight national championships and retired as the game's all-time wins leader.

She coached 11 seasons and accumulated 267 victories before Auriemma became a head coach at UConn prior to the 1985-86 season and she won three national championships before Auriemma won his first. It was a win over then-top-ranked Tennessee which allowed the Huskies to ascend to the No. 1 spot for the first time in program history during the 1994-95 season prior to UConn winning the 1995 national championship.

Auriemma was known to needle Summitt at times during their relationship, branding Tennessee as the "Evil Empire" and Summitt eventually canceled the annual series with UConn following the 2006-07 season over what was believed to be a recruiting gripe. The two reconciled following Summitt's diagnosis. Both are members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

"Pat and Geno being Pat and Geno, we have a long history," Auriemma said. "So if that didn't exist, I don't know that we'd be talking about it like this at all.

"It did make me think about how if you're around long enough ... the world spins, you know, and it spins you in a lot of different directions. But one thing for sure, what was old becomes new and what is new becomes old."

Auriemma said when Summitt was coaching, "everybody in America" would talk about the Tennessee coach in one of two ways. Either they admired her for winning and winning the right way or they were sick of the Lady Vols at the top and wanted to see someone new receive the accolades.

"You had a part of the population that would go, 'Man, I want to beat her butt so bad. I want to beat Tennessee so bad. They roll into the Final Four like they own the place. Who the hell do they think they are and one of these days ... la la la la la,'" Auriemma said.

"And you go around and you go around and you go around and then you wake up one morning and you pick up anyplace that you read and everybody goes, 'Damn Geno Auriemma. He thinks he's so funny. They roll into the Final Four like they own the place. I don't care who wins the national championship as long as it's not them.'

"And I start to laugh, you know, and I go, 'Oh, my God.' I admire Pat for the way she handled that all those years. I don't think I'm handling it as well as she did."

Auriemma is 1,097-142 (.885) with an unprecedented 11 national championships.

DePaul coach Doug Bruno, whose team was UConn's last opponent in a game played on Dec. 29, said he admires Auriemma for building the program from the ground up.

"My reflection in it is that my respect for what he's done here at UConn goes back to how he started this program from nothing," Bruno said."I really have a lot of respect for the fact it started from really, truly the bottom and it's been built from the bottom up.

"He grabbed that first national championship and did what you're supposed to do, translate it into multiple national championships, with the help of great assistants and a great, stable assistant coaching staff and great players through the years and Kathy Auriemma (Geno's wife) deserves a little bit of credit here also."

Bruno said he knows what it's like to "grovel up the food chain" to try to win 70% of his games and that Auriemma creeping toward 90% deserves "great respect."

Auriemma was counting recently how many players in the UConn program have achieved All-America honors more than once.

"There's like 17 kids at UConn that have been All-American multiple times," Auriemma said. "So when you have that kind of roster, when you have those kinds of players in your team, stuff like this is possible."

v.fulkerson@theday.com