Few Connecticut public figures evoke warmer admiration than Geno Auriemma, whose University of Connecticut women’s basketball teams have won eight national championships. Italy-born and Philadelphia-bred, Mr. Auriemma loves Italian cooking, and with Geno’s Grille, his restaurant in Storrs Center, a glossy new mixed-use development next to the main campus, he has set out to present Italian food “the way it used to be,” as he put it on the phone after my visits.

Open since April, the restaurant is spacious and bright, with colossal windows, gleaming wall tiles and hardwood floors, and ceilings so high that even Brittney Griner couldn’t touch them. A table by the door displays a reproduction of UConn’s most recent N.C.A.A. trophy and bottles of Geno’s marinara, inspired by the sauce Mr. Auriemma’s 83-year-old mother makes. The beaming face of the coach, who, with his partners, also has a pub and other food establishments at Mohegan Sun, stares down from two giant illuminated photo panels as his kitchen team, led by chef Nicola Maggioni, works busily away, putting out an all-purpose Italian-American menu of pizza, pasta, steaks, seafood and burgers.

Geno’s gets a lot right. There are nice touches, like the welcoming treat of a sweet pea and Parmesan mash, served with olive oil and bread. As an appetizer we split a superb pizza margherita, its thin crust perfectly browned, its surface of bubbling mozzarella enlivened with zigzag drizzles of vivid green pesto.