Huskies. Heartbreak. Hard lessons.

This week on Why Am I Yelling? we go deep into one of the most compelling leadership case studies in recent sports history — the 2026 UConn March Madness run.

We break down three stories that couldn't be more different:

🏀 Dan Hurley — the fiery, f-bomb-dropping, play-sheet-crumpling coach who turned down the Los Angeles Lakers to chase a historic three-peat. What does his coaching style really teach us about passion vs. unmanaged intensity? And what did he show us in the moment that mattered most — the final loss?

🏆 Alex Karaban — the student-athlete we all need to talk about. A 3.39 GPA economics major who played five years at UConn, never transferred, passed on the NBA multiple times, and became the winningest player in program history. His final act in a UConn uniform? Giving up the ball so his teammate could hit the shot. This is what character looks like.

🔥 Geno Auriemma — twelve national championships, one of the greatest coaches in American sports history. And one very public meltdown at the women's Final Four that became a masterclass in what NOT to do when the pressure gets to you. We talk about the confrontation with Dawn Staley, the skipped handshake, the slow apology — and what all of it reveals about leadership, legacy, and the weight of words.

This episode is for anyone who leads — a team, a company, a family, or just themselves. March Madness doesn't care about your résumé. It just asks: who are you tonight?

#WhyAmIYelling #menopausalmom #leadership #resilience #grit #basketball #sportsmom #basketballmom #uconn #uconnbasketball #marchmadness

Transcript

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Hello, yellers! Welcome back to Why Am I Yelling? Musings from a middle-aged menopausal mom. I'm your host, Krista Rizzo, and I need to start this episode with a confession. For those of you who don't already know, I am a diehard Yukon fan, Go Huskies. Not born and raised in Connecticut, born and raised in New York, and um have lived in Connecticut for uh have owned a home in Connecticut for the last 13 years, lived here for the last six, uh, have a Yukon Husky uh at the University of Connecticut, studying to be a civil engineer. And uh, you know, I talk frequently about my family and our escapades and all the things on this podcast. So you already know, right? You already know that I have a Husky and that we are diehard Huskies fans for all the sports. We have been to, you know, all the sports uh events in the last several years that my child has been attending the school, and we just love the culture there and we love the vibe, and it's just such a great, great place, and it is without question the basketball capital of the world. And it is April 9th today, and we are coming off of March Madness and uh you know April Final Four, and what a ride, Huskies! What a ride! Um you know, you bleed blue when you're a Husky fan, and you know, this March uh was glorious and chaotic and heartbreaking and infuriating, but mostly beautiful. Uh, and there was so much that happened in these last two weeks for the women and the men uh in basketball that I really felt like there's a big narrative to talk about today. Um, we're gonna talk about legacy and we're gonna talk about resilience and we're gonna talk about um leadership and how it comes into play and why it comes into play in many different ways uh throughout these last you know couple of weeks, several weeks, and um I'm excited to talk about it, right? Nothing, no holds barred, we're not holding anything back. We're gonna celebrate, we're gonna critique, uh, and we are going to you know really talk about the lessons that that we can take away from these programs and these experiences that we shared with these student athletes and their leaders. It is no question that Yukon basketball is one of the biggest and greatest case studies in leadership, culture, and resilience and also ego uh that you'll find anywhere in American sports, not just in college basketball, but anywhere, right? Professional sports, college sports, um, youth and rec leagues, like everybody watches March Madness, right? Everybody watches women's sports, everybody watches what these coaches and players are doing. And while there are a lot of elite programs out there, you know, Yukon is the pinnacle. And, you know, we're talking about Gina Oriyama and Dan Hurley and you know, players like Alex Caraban, who, you know, have made moments for us, not just in the last couple of weeks, but over, you know, decades in in some cases, right? Um, so today we're gonna talk about Dan Hurley and Alex Caraban and you know Gino Oriama's epic meltdown on the final floor uh floor uh in the women's tournament. So, you know, we're not we're not gonna sugarcoat this uh because it's a really important lesson in leadership, and I want to talk about it, especially for women in the world that we're living in right now, and it's important that it's acknowledged, right? So let's get into it, right? Uh we're gonna start with the boys, the men, right? It's 2026. Uh Yukon basketball is in their third final four in four years. We won back-to-back national championships in 23 and 24. Um, we were eliminated in 25, and we made it back in 26. In that time, our head coach Dan Hurley turned down a job from the Los Angeles Lakers uh to coach LeBron. Uh, he chose to stay in stores and continue his epic career path to being one of the greatest basketball coaches in history, right? He feels like he's got unfinished business, and I am sure, I'm hopeful, that uh he sticks around and you know continues on that quest and on that path for uh selfishly for Yukon, right? Uh, you know, we opened uh the Yukon Huskies as I think the number three seed in the country uh because we had lost ground last year. Um we lost to St. John's in the tournament this year, uh, and you know, a few hard pills to swallow along the way this year. It was not an easy season for our men. Uh we were not undefeated, we had injuries, we had, you know, just stuff coming in and coming and going uh throughout the whole season. And, you know, during this tournament, this team went out and proved that they had the grit and the resilience to be worthy of standing on that stage and playing in that final game, right? We beat UCLA, we beat Michigan, we beat Duke. Um, and you know, we're we're gonna be talking about Braylon Mullins and that three-point shot almost buzzer beater at the you know, at the end of the game to beat Duke. Uh, and then we beat Illinois. So it was a great, great run. And uh nothing but pride uh in the Yukon Huskies, right? But they lost. We lost to Michigan in the final game, 69-63. It was definitely a heartbreak. Uh, I think there were a lot of people out there who thought Michigan was just gonna roll, steamroll right over us, and we put up an insane fight. Uh, you know, we talked about Dan Hurley talked about it in a bunch of his press conferences afterwards, that this team is a team of warriors, and that is 100% what that was. And so I kind of want to peel back the onion on what it took to get to that place, right? And I think it's important for us to kind of consider that as fans and you know, as people who are doing constantly doing work on ourselves and wanting to get better and uh, you know, learning lessons every single day. It's important to dissect uh things like this, especially when they're of interest to you, right? Uh, you know, as I said, this team stumbled, right? And they leaned on their resilience to get to where they are, right? They, it wasn't the absence of struggle, it was the persistence through that struggle. And that's what makes this Yukon story so compelling, right? They didn't hide that mess. Uh, Dan is super vocal and very uh out loud about, you know, not pretending that everything's fine when it isn't. Uh, he is raw, he's loud, and he definitely can show his frustration. We all know we love the you know, Dan Hurley faces that they meme. Um, but he took those emotions and redirected them. And his team followed. And so I think lesson number one, there are going to be several lessons that we take out of this conversation today, but lesson number one is resilience isn't about having no bad days, it's about what you do after those bad days. Every leader, whether you're coaching a team, you're running a company, you're raising kids, is going to have a season where things are not clicking. And the question is, do you fold or do you find a way? And UConn found a way. And that is definitely worth saying out loud, right? Dan Hurley has a fire and he has a framework. And so let's kind of take a minute to get to know who he is. Because I think that's important. He's not, he's a complicated person, and I think that's what is the most interesting thing about him. You know, he's a guy from Jersey City, his dad was an all-of-f uh Hall of Fame uh high school basketball coach. His brother played for Duke, he played in the NBA, his brother also later coached Arizona State, right? There is basketball running through the hurley blood. And Dan played at Seton Hall. He had, he is very clear and very open about mental health and personal issues that he had uh when he was playing during college. And, you know, he figured out how to build himself back up and do the work on himself personally, so then he could go on to coach at Wagner and coach at Rhode Island and turn that program around. And then he came to Yukon in 2018, and we had not been in a tournament since 2016, and since then we've been in several. He rebuilt from the ground up two national championships, a third final four, uh, a giant contract. Uh, and you know, I it it's probably okay for me to say that he will go down as one of the greatest basketball coaches in college basketball history, right? Um, but he's intense. And there is a certain kind of athlete that can only handle that kind of intensity. There are people who have walked away from Yukon because they couldn't handle the intensity, and there are people that come to Yukon because they want to be coached by somebody like him, right? He is not a stranger to throwing an F bomb on the sidelines in the literally the first minute of the game, right? He is emotional, and he has been known to argue with officials and you know have people hold him back from getting thrown out of games potentially, right? So we've all seen it. We've seen what the memes look like, we see the replays on ESPN and all the college sports networks. Um, but what I think the most fascinating thing for me is while he is such chaos on the sidelines, he turns around to his players and he tells them to calm down. Right? Don't worry, we got this. Calm down, it's gonna be okay. So he is simultaneously the most stressed person there in the building, and at the same time, he is demanding that everybody else hold steady. That is brilliance and also insanity, right? But what does that coaching style actually teach us? It's not easy, right? There is a version of a conversation where you can just say he's passionate, that's who he is, end of story. But that's not quite all of it, right? The more honest read is his style works in spite of some things, not entirely because of them. The players have to translate his intensity, his staff management manages him, and then he's got a player who he has leaned on for the last few years, Alex Caravan, who we affectionately call AK, um, who Dan Hurley himself has called a Hurley whisperer, a babysitter to the other teammates, right? Someone who can translate what this coach wants without any extra adjectives, right? Think about it. This kid can, he's a senior leader and he can run interference between your team and your coach. That is also something to sit with. And we're gonna talk about AK in just a minute because his story is pretty impressive, I think, right? But the framework under the fire that is Dan Hurley is and the Yukon Huskies is extraordinary. Off ball movement, complicated actions, counterpunches to every defensive scheme out there that college basketball is throwing at them. Their system is elite. The preparation is elite. The culture of accountability, even in the chaotic moments, is also elite. Dan Hurley built support structures around his most human flaws, around his vulnerability. That is self-awareness, even if his flaws are still very much on display. Lesson number two. Unmanaged intensity is a liability. Know the difference and build systems around your edges. There's also some grace that comes with this, right? So when Yukon lost to Michigan in the final game, in the championship game, Dan Hurley didn't lose it. He kept himself together. He called Michigan, quote unquote, clearly the best team in the country. He showed up with humility in the hardest moment. His team stayed after Michigan celebrated on the court to, you know, do the team lineup, good game, hand smacks, congratulatory, you know, moment. He said it was a soldier's death that game, right? They fought to the end and just came up short. That is growth. That is fire without a flame out. And, you know, I think that is really important. It's an important lesson in sportsmanship, it's an important lesson in leadership. And lesson number three is the truest test of your coaching isn't how you handle the wins. It's how you handle the losses. So let's talk about everyone's favorite athlete at University of Connecticut right now, and that's in Alex Caravan. Um, you know, this story is so impressive to me in the world of NIL and, you know, I don't really understand all of it because I don't have a college athlete. Um, but you know, a name, image, likeness, athletes are getting paid, they're entering portals to transfer to other schools. There's not a whole lot of loyalty to programs these days, right? And Alex Caravan is the poster child for loyalty. And he has even said out loud that he didn't want to play anywhere else, he had no intention of playing anywhere else, and that he believes that loyalty is something that we're missing now in today's culture with transfer portals and L N I L and all of that stuff. So let's talk about this kid from Southboro, Massachusetts, who is an adult in real life, right? He is earning an economics degree from UConn. His parents are both they're immigrants, but also uh very accomplished people. His mom holds a doctorate from Northwestern, his dad is a software engineer, um, and his parents have famously made sure that he is academically sound and has something to fall back on in case basketball doesn't work for him. That's the kind of roots that this guy comes from, right? Pride in his heritage, pride in his in his studies and his academics, and very, very clearly pride in his team and his loyalty to his team. So he has played for five years at the University of Connecticut. He never transferred. Uh, you know, he wanted to become and has now become the winningest player in Yukon men's basketball history. And there's a lot of history in Gamble Pavilion. It's insane, right? So he played in his third national championship game this week. Uh, he's the first player outside of John Wooden's UCLA uh dynasty to do that. He was inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame or Hall of Honor while still being an active player. He's the only player uh on the men's side who has ever done that while still playing on the court. Uh in his loss to Michigan, he played all 40 minutes of the game. He didn't sit down for one second. 17 points, 11 rebounds. Uh, and he was the one. If you, you know, were watching the game with the high intensity, like you know, we were in my house, uh, you could see him directing traffic, right? He was the one on the court keeping us in the game when we were playing that game, right? He, you know, has famously said that, you know, it hurts, the loss hurts, obviously, right? You feel your heart is like ripped out of your chest for these for these guys, right? But he is has said that he is leaving Yukon at a better place than when he started, and that he did the best that he could, he gave it all that he had, and you know, he just wanted to be everything for his team. And I think as a young person, 24 years old, I think he is, I have no idea, like early 20s. Um, that is really fascinating to me because most people at that age are not thinking about how they're going to lead. He doesn't yell, he's not a chest thumper. Uh, I love quotes. I'm gonna quote some of his teammates because I had to pull some of those. Um, you know, Terrace Reed has said, you know, when someone asked him, you know, what caravan was to them, he said everything. The way he works off the court, the discipline, and what he's motivated by on the court. That guy works his tail off. Having a guy like that who just knows how to win, he makes the right place at the right time. It's like he does everything right. And that's, you know, from somebody who is sitting next to him in a locker room, which I'm sure means the world to your teammates, right? Dan Hurley uh has described him as like having an associate head coach that's in the locker room, that's in the apartments, that's in the dining room, that's in the weight room, that's peer pressuring his teammates to do extra. He's like a top assistant around the players all the time. That's AK, right? And then if you watched the Duke game, and if you didn't watch the Duke game, I'm sure you watched the last two minutes at least, or one minute and forty-something seconds, right? We were down to our last seconds. Alex had the ball, and he knew he didn't have the shot, so he selflessly passed it to Braylon Mullins to get the three for the win. Come on. That is epic. That is chef's kiss, you guys. The win mattered more than the personal credit that would have come with that should Alex have made that or missed it, right? If he had missed that shot and we would have lost, right? Could you imagine? We could, I mean, we could think about those scenarios all day long, right? That's the whole thing, though. And so lesson number four is the most powerful leaders often lead by example, not volume. Culture is set in the weight room, in the dining hall, in the private moments that nobody is filming. I think it's super important to talk about a relationship between a player and a coach. And we all know how much Dan loves Alex. Uh he consults him, they talk to each other, they have a really great relationship and it's clear. And so that kind of relationship is the one that you build when you have loyalty, right? When you have commitment from a coach and a player, and when trust flows over the course of you know, years. And so, lesson number five, very quickly after lesson number four, is loyalty. Real loyalty, not compliance, is a two way street. When a player gives everything to your program, you owe them honesty in return. So Alex will probably go to the NBA draft, right? He'll probably get picked in the second round, first round, second round, who knows. But whatever team gets Alex Caravan, you are getting more than a basketball player. And I'm sure that you will have multiple conversations with Dan Hurley for him to tell you that. He is a culture architect, and that is really what is the most impressive thing about him is that he is all around and he has so many different layers to him, and he can be such an asset in so many different ways. And I feel like one day we are gonna see Alex Caravan on the sideline coaching at an elite level for sure. Um now we segue from the men to the women who, you know, I just want to start by saying this on the women's side. Shout out, Lady Huskies. Your 54 and oh undefeated run was unprecedented and will probably never be matched. That last loss was from the sidelines, from the viewer's couch, looked like it was nerves, sheer nerves, and just being in your own heads at that game. But, you know, you can't you can't win them all. And while it's really disappointing and sad for the team and sad for Yukon Nation, we can't be anything but proud of the work that you have put in, the commitment that you made to your team and to the program, and for the joy that you brought to Husky Nation. So, congratulations on your epic run. You should be really proud of what you've all have accomplished, and don't let you know the loss in the final four, you know, be what defines you, because that is so far from what defines you. Your coach, however, had a moment. And for women around the world, it was really, really disappointing. And for those of you who don't know, I would be remiss as I'm sitting here with my feminist era plat, you know, plate sitting behind me, if I didn't talk about Gino Oriyama and his reactionary ego on that night, which I'm I know that he probably is very regretful of. Uh, and he has issued apologies, and we're gonna talk about that in just a second. But let's talk about what happened, right? Uh I want to be careful because I do mean this sincerely. Gino Oriyama is one of the most, if not the most, accomplished coach in American sports. Not just college sports, American sports. He has 12 national championship titles. He has built a program that has defined women's basketball for decades and has laid the groundwork for the elite programs at Yukon and other programs around the country. Because if you're not emulating a Yukon program or at least taking pieces from it, who even are you, right? All of this matters, right? We have to hold that alongside everything that we're gonna talk about right now, because again, two things can be true at the same time. But what happened at the game on April 3rd in Phoenix was a failure of leadership on the coach's part. Full stop. And it requires examination, not just because I want to pile on Gino, he's been piled on enough, but because there are lessons that are too important to gloss over from this, especially for women, right? So Yukon entered the game undefeated, 54-0, like I just said a minute ago. They lost in this game in the Final Four to South Carolina 62-48. It wasn't even close. South Carolina steamrolled over Yukon, where Yukon had steamrolled over every other team for 54 games. Don Staley's squad was simply better that night. And during the game, you know, Gino did a live interview on the sidelines when the game was going on, and he used that moment to complain about the officiating, about, you know, language that he was accusing Don Staley of having, uh, and you know, claiming that one of the South Carolina players ripped Sarah Strong's Yukon jersey. Uh and what was crazy is that during the press conference afterwards, his own player was sitting right next to him, Sarah, and she said she ripped it herself by accident, and he was still defending his theory that it was ripped by a different player on the other team. He was defending it while she was contradicting him, his own player. Then, in the final seconds, before the buzzer even went off for the end of the game, Gino marched over to Dawn's sideline and got in her face. And they had a yelling match to one another. And then he about faced and walked off the court by himself, without shaking the hands of his South Carolina players, without the coach's handshake line, without the team handshake line, the most basic universal act of sportsmanship in all of athletics, he chose to skip and he walked in the tunnel alone. He also chose to abandon his team in that moment, in that moment where they needed him. Vulnerable athletes who had just lost a very important game, and he chose to walk out on them. In the press conference, when he was asked, he you know what he said to Coach Staley, he said, I just said what I said, nothing, it was nothing, and he refused to address it. He glossed over it, and then spent minutes insinuating that there were double standards going on, that Staley, a black woman, gets to behave on the sidelines in ways that he cannot. That is not neutral observation about officiating culture. That lands differently, that has weight. And it was said in public on national TV while he was in pain after he lost. And here's why this matters beyond sports, right? The reason why I'm spending time on this isn't because I enjoy criticizing. I don't, I'm also not a confrontation lover, right? It's because this is what it looks like when somebody in a position of immense power cannot handle losing. Hello, world, like the ripple effect goes much further than the game itself. His players were watching, they just had come off one of the hardest games of their careers, and their head coach, their model, their leader, their friend chose to perform grievance instead of show grace. That is a piece of what they took from that court in that moment. Dawn Staley, by contrast, was asked about it immediately. She was preparing for a championship game the very next night. And so her response was nothing. Nothing is going to derail us or me from focusing on the task at hand. There are a lot of distractions that are placed in your life. You're either going to address them and let it overcome you, or you're going to stick with the task at hand. And then South Carolina went on the next day to play for a championship. She showed grace under pressure. That is what leadership looks like in fire. You can love her, you can hate her, you can be neutral about her, whatever. But she chose to take a different path in that moment. Now, Gino Oriyama eventually issued an apology. One that didn't mention Stilly by name the first time. Then there was more pressure that came from the public on him to continue the apology. And then I think it came out yesterday or the day before. His second apology was more direct. And he said, I have lost more games in the final four than any coach in history. But Friday, I lost something more important. I lost myself. In all of it, it came four days after the fact. After public pressure. Lesson number six. The measure of a leader is not how they handle victory, it's how they handle loss, especially loss in front of everyone under maximum pressure. There is also a specific sub-lesson here about legacy that I would like to discuss. Gina Oriama has built one of the most extraordinary legacies in coaching history. One moment is not going to erase that. Dawn Staley herself said so. And that was a class, that was a class act in saying that, right? One moment, however, absolutely damaged it. Unnecessarily, entirely self-inflicted. When you have that much legacy, you also have that much to protect. And the way you protect it is by being the person your legacy says you are. Especially when, even when it hurts. Lesson number seven. You don't get to retire your legacy while you're still coaching. Every moment is still your story. Act accordingly. And you can equate that to your job, to your parenting, to your relationship, to your friendships, to all the things. Act accordingly. Another thing that is not sitting well with me is when a white coach implies that a black woman coach is getting away with behavior that he can't in today's day and age, in 2026, on national television, in the middle of losing, that is not just frustration. That is a statement that carries history. Leaders need to be aware of the full weight of their words, especially in moments of pain, because pain does not pause the responsibility that comes with power. I want to sit with that for a minute. We are living in a world where women's rights and women are being erased from history, from walls, from being stripped of things that we have only had for a very short period of time. Every woman is taking this personally. Think about it. Act accordingly. Lesson number eight. Your worst moments reveal assumptions you didn't know you were carrying. Pain is not permission to say whatever comes to mind. We talk about it on this podcast kind of frequently. Reacting versus responding and knowing the difference. It's a big difference. Okay, so what are we taking away from this? We have covered a lot of ground. I know we're going over our 30-minute limit. We're gonna be at like 37 minutes or something for this podcast, so I apologize for the extra seven minutes. But let's bring it all together because I can't leave you hanging, right? The Yukon story, both programs, is one unified lesson about what it means to lead, what it means to fail, and what happens in between. For both programs, and this March tested that brand in completely different ways. The men's team showed us resilience. They started the season with enormous expectations, they stumbled, they found each other, and they made it to the championship game for the third time in four years. They lost with dignity. Their coach, for all of his fire, found composure in the final game when it mattered the most. Alex Caravan showed us what it looks like to play the long game, to stay when you could leave, to pass the ball when you could have taken the shot, to set a culture standard every single day in that dining hall, in that weight room, and in the early morning film sessions that nobody else is watching except their team. He's leaving Yukon, and in his own words, better than he found it. That is a life philosophy, not just a basketball one. Hang that on the wall, right? And Gino Oriyama showed us painfully and publicly what happens when the pressure finally cracks the container. When the need to win overpowers the commitment to model the behavior that you've spent decades building a reputation around, when 41 years of success creates a quiet belief that the rules of sportsmanship apply to everyone else. But this is what we keep coming back to. All three stories are about the same question. How do you handle the moment when things go wrong? Dan Hurley is still working on it, genuinely growing, acknowledges that, ended his season with more grace than he started it. AK, full role model, full stop, someone to study. Gina Oriyama, a hard and public learned lesson with a legacy that is more than one bad night, but one bad night that will not be forgotten. And that, yellers, is March Madness. One bracket, one elimination, no do-overs. You find out who you are when it matters. The bracket doesn't care about your resume, it just asks, who are you tonight? So here, before we leave, we wrapped it up. Your resilience is not proven on easy days, yellers. Your leadership is not measured in your victories. Your legacy is being written right now in how you handle the moments that aren't going your way. In how you treat the person you are shaking hands with after the loss. In whether you pass the ball or force the shot, in whether you build structures around your worst impulses or let them run the show. Alex passed the ball. Dan stayed when the Lakers called. Gino lost himself and then found the courage to say so publicly. Each of those choices tells us something about who these people are. So the question I'm gonna ask you and leave you with is what does your March Madness moment reveal about you? Now obviously it doesn't have to be March Madness moment, but you know what I mean. What does your what do your hard moments reveal about you? Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. Why am I yelling? Um this open if this episode hit home for you guys, like it, share it, and send it to somebody who needs to hear it. Share it with your coworkers. It's a good lesson about leadership and resilience and and vulnerability. Share it with your kids. It's a good lesson about sportsmanship uh and vulnerability and creating friendships and loyalty, right? Let us know how we're doing. Leave us a comment, share it out, subscribe on YouTube and all the other places where you get your podcasts. Uh grit is built in the off season. Character shows up in March. That's what I'm leaving you with today. I love you, yellers. We'll see you next time.