The Dynasty: UConn Huskies on Apple TV, directed by Matthew Hamachek and Erica Sashin, is a three-part look inside the program that coach Geno Auriemma built from the ground up to dominate women’s college basketball, winning 12 championships since 1995. Six of those championships were won between 2009-16.
Opening Shot: Scenes from the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, where the University of Connecticut played the University of South Carolina.
The Gist: We see Auriemma and his coaches and players inside the locker room at halftime of the 2025 final (which — spoiler alert? — the Huskies won, 82-59, giving them their first national title since 2016). As anyone who’s followed Auriemma for any period of time, he’s angry at some of the sloppy play by his team in the first half, and drops f-bombs looking at game footage, with his longtime head assistant coach, Chris Dailey, trying to keep him from completely flying off the handle.
The first episode, however, mostly examines how Auriemma got the head coaching job in 1985, when he was 31 and the women’s program at UConn hadn’t won a thing. As Auriemma tells the filmmakers, he didn’t even want to coach women at first, but when he realized that they’re as tough and coachable as anyone else, that unlocked something for him. This is why he coaches his teams like they’re basketball players, not pulling punches or being at all gentle just because his players are women.
A good example of that toughness can be seen in his relationship with his first big recruit, Rebecca Lobo. She tells the filmmakers that she came close to quitting the program in her sophomore season because Auriemma was so tough on her; his view was that she needs to work harder and be tougher to achieve her goals. It all came together in the 1995 championship game against Tennessee and their legendary coach, Pat Summit, which the Huskies — then considered a Cinderella team — won in comeback fashion, cementing an undefeated season.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Dynasty: UConn Huskies is the second in Apple TV’s The Dynasty series, following The Dynasty: New England Patriots.
Our Take: The Dynasty: UConn Huskies is trying to examine 31 years and 12 championships’ worth of history in three 40-minute episodes, so it’s not exactly going to go in-depth on all of the issues and controversies surrounding the program. And given how controversial Auriemma has been in his 41 years as the program’s coach, it’s a bit disappointing that there really isn’t enough time to really examine those controversies with rigor.
However, the series certainly isn’t a hagiography of Auriemma. Even the coach himself would acknowledge that he’s got a temper and his exceedingly tough on his players, and that aspect of the program’s history isn’t sugarcoated by any means. In the first episode, for instance, there’s a montage of player interview snippets where they talk about how much they learned from Auriemma, but were happy when their time in the program came to the end.
The coach drops f-bombs left and right, even when the filmmaker tells him during his interview that his shoes are squeaking into the microphone. His feud with Jim Calhoun, the men’s basketball coach from 1986-2012 and a legend in his own right, is examined, as is Auriemma’s seething jealousy of Summit and her Tennessee program, which came back to win three championships in a row after their 1995 defeat to UConn. What we hope to see at some point in the three episodes is some examination of gender issues in the college coaching ranks.
For the most part, though, the series is going to examine the school’s various championship eras, including the 2025 team that brought home the trophy for the first time in 9 years. That may be more than enough for fans, especially those who have seen women’s basketball rise in stature via Lobo and other superstars that have come out of UConn’s program, like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi.
Performance Worth Watching: Auriemma is no doubt the star here, though it’s gratifying to watch Dailey calm him down in various situations over the decades.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: We hear from Bird and Taurasi, members of the next Huskies team to win a title, in 2000.
Sleeper Star: Lobo is brutally honest about her time with Auriemma, even if it ultimately got her a national championship and launched her career as one of the first megastars in the WNBA.
Most Pilot-y Line: None that we can find. The show doesn’t really have any time to go off into tangents that might yield silly moments or interview snippets.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Dynasty: UConn Huskies might speed through 30-plus years of UConn’s women’s basketball dynasty, but it does take the time to examine some of the thornier issues with Geno Auriemma’s tenure as the architect of that dynasty.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
