The coaches are on the ground level, and the ones responsible for teaching the players the fundamentals needed so they can reach their potential on the court. For years, women’s basketball was lauded for its technically sound play on the floor.

But Auriemma and other coaches are starting to see a crack in that foundation. Many of the skills prospects should already have, such as throwing a proper chest pass, are now being taught at the collegiate level.

“In the big picture over the next 10-15 years, the most important thing we can do is make sure the product is getting better,” Auriemma said. “You can’t keep selling the same iPhone for 10 years and expect your profits to grow. We have to figure out a way to make the product we have better every year.”

One of the biggest areas lacking in the women’s game comes in the youth development stages, Auriemma says. One way to remedy that is to somehow devise a certification process for coaches. A centralized body, perhaps USA Basketball, could conduct clinics and seminars on the proper way for players to learn the game at young ages.

College basketball coaches have seen youth coaching knowledge erode through the years, a topic that was discussed at the White Paper Summit.

“Training coaches how to teach the game is going to be a huge piece of the puzzle,” Auriemma said. “One of the advantages that helped me be a better college coach is that I coached six years in high school. You are coaching ninth-graders who can’t play and can’t dribble twice. You have to start at the very beginning and work your way up until they are pretty decent.”

Auriemma said he’s noticed a drastic change in his ability to evaluate players through the years. In the mid-1990s most of the big summer tournaments were played in a format that required players to win state or regional competitions to qualify for a national tournament.

Teams had to practice to get better; winning and losing meant something.

Now, teams pay a fee to get into a particular tournament, and they are usually guaranteed a certain number of games.

In the same era, Auriemma remembers, he could go to summer games and see up to eight Division I players combined between the two teams. Auriemma theorizes parents are afraid to have their children play on teams with other great players because their kids won’t stand out as much.

“Now you go to Chicago and there are 500 teams, but 350 of them have no DI players – zero,” Auriemma said.

Even the players who are highly touted aren’t always as impressive as you would think.

“When they show up in college, you hear how someone was a first-team All-American in high school,” Auriemma said. “Then you watch them play for a half an hour and you go, ‘Wow. What are the coaches doing with the players on that team who weren’t first-team All-American?’ I would kill myself if I was coaching those guys.”

Female players of today can run faster, jump higher and are better in terms of athletic skills. But the ability to play five-on-five basketball doesn’t exist, according to Auriemma.

He said the men’s game has a similar problem, but the talent pool is just larger when compared with the women’s game. He believes the proliferation of money is the reason behind the lack of fundamentals being taught.

Elite-level camps used to be organized around stations focused on fundamentals. But Auriemma has seen those phased out in favor of more lucrative tournaments.

“I’m probably not the right person to speak about money,” said Auriemma, who signed a five-year contract extension for $10.86 million last March. “I get paid a ridiculous amount of money to coach women’s basketball. But once people realized you can make money in women’s basketball, it changed everything. God bless them, because they all made a lot of money with these camps. But who lost? The players; they stink because they never get to practice, and they don’t get taught anything.”

Auriemma would like to see more rules changes to help the offense in women’s basketball.

He cites examples such as Major League Baseball lowering the mound following the 1968 season, which became known as “the year of the pitcher.” Following the dominant pitching performances, MLB lowered the height of the mounds to 10 inches from 15 inches to give the hitters a better chance to have success.

He also noted that the NFL made rules to protect quarterbacks and wide receivers from physical play so more scoring could occur through the passing game.

Auriemma believes the collegiate women’s basketball game has become too physical.

“What is entertaining about every time someone moves, you grab them; every time they cut, you punch them; every time someone shoots, they get cracked?” Auriemma said. “We have to allow our players to show off their skills. They can cut, pass and shoot. It is kind of a throwback to (the 1986 movie) ‘Hoosiers.’”

Sometimes the officials take the brunt of the criticism for the physical nature of women’s basketball. Auriemma feels that is misguided because that is the way coaches are teaching their teams to play.

He added it comes from the American mentality that teams have to be tough to be successful.

Auriemma’s recent stint in international basketball, where he led the U.S. women to gold in the 2010 FIBA World Championships and the 2012 Summer Games, showed him the rest of the world has abandoned that style.

In the international game, teams shoot two shots after four team fouls have been committed. In women’s college basketball, one-and-one situations at the foul line take place on the seventh team foul of each half. The double bonus doesn’t kick in until the 10th team foul.

Auriemma said it is not unusual to hear an international coach scolding the team about committing fouls and putting the opposition on the free-throw line.

“When I was coaching the Olympic team, the older players on our team would yell at the younger players to stop fouling,” Auriemma said.

One change Auriemma trumpets is for the women’s game to return to using the same basketball as the men. Before the 1984-85 season, the NCAA went to a basketball that is one inch smaller in circumference and two ounces lighter than the men’s ball. It was introduced to women’s basketball in the belief that it would be easier for women to dribble and control since they have smaller hands.

It had the initial desired effect as teams shot an NCAA-record 44.2 percent from the field in the 1985-86 season. But the field goal percentages have steadily declined over the last seven years to 38.9 percent last season, which is an all-time low since the NCAA began sponsoring women’s championships in 1981-82.

Auriemma said the women’s basketball is too light.

“It hits the rim and flies off,” Auriemma said. “When is the last time you saw the ball hit the rim multiple times in a women’s game and the shot still goes in? Never; and it happens all the time in the men’s game. Look at the layups in women’s basketball. The ball comes off the rim, and it’s gone. It’s like pingpong balls in the lottery.”

During UConn’s version of basketball madness, Auriemma and Huskies’ men’s coach Kevin Ollie each coached a team made up of half women’s players and half men’s players. Auriemma said he was approached about the format and was told they would use the men’s basketball the first half and the women’s ball the second half.

He declined to use the women’s basketball.

“My guys shot the hell out of it that night,” Auriemma said.