Auriemma, Martelli lead Lapchick award winners

Feb 26, 2025, 10:08 AM ET

NEW YORK CITY– Geno Auriemma and Phil Martelli headline this year’s receivers of the Joe Lapchick Character Award.Joining the 2

coaches will be long time guys’s basketball official Gene Steratore and previous Fordham athletic director Frank McLaughlin.Auriemma is the winningest coach in women’s basketball history, leading UConn to 11 championship games, and has actually won an NCAA-record 1,239 games in his 40 years at the school. Off the court, the Huskies boast an ideal 100%graduation rate among his four-year players.The Hall of Fame coach has an enduring bond with Martelli back to when Auriemma was an assistant coach for him at Bishop Kenrick High School. Martelli recommended Auriemma for an assistant position at Virginia with Debbie Ryan, a job he held before getting the UConn position in 1986. Martelli led Saint Joseph’s for 24 seasons as the head coach, directing the Hawks to seven NCAA tournament appearances. His 2004 group made the Elite 8 after going unbeaten in the routine season. Martelli’s team lost in the conference tournament to Xavier and after that was beaten by Oklahoma State in the East Regional Final. He was the AP Coach of the Year that season and won 444 games in his career.Steratore was a Division I males’s basketball official from 1997-2018, operating in the Big East, Big Ten and Atlantic 10 conferences. He likewise worked two Sweet 16

games in the NCAA competition. Steratore has been on CBS broadcasts throughout March Insanity offering rule explanations. It’s a role he has likewise performed in the NFL. Steratore was an NFL official for 15 seasons.McLaughlin served as Fordham’s athletic director from 1985-2012 before being promoted to the function of associate vice president of trainee affairs for athletic alumni relations and external affairs/athletic director emeritus. He retired in 2023. Before ending up being an advertisement, McLaughlin was a college coach, leading the Harvard males’s basketball team from 1977-85. The group went 15-9 in his final year there.This is the 17th year the award will exist to those who have actually shown the character qualities

of Lapchick, who coached at St. John’s and with the New York City Knicks. The quartet will be honored at a luncheon on Sept. 19 in New York City.