"He brought a different point of view to things. "Every knows what coach has done for women's basketball," said Diana Taurasi, his former UConn and now national team star. The only positive was since they never attended his games, he'd just tell them he played well. His parents weren't interested in sports, and Auriemma said he wasn't any good at them anyway. He was an immigrant kid, moving to Norristown, Pa., at age seven, speaking only Italian. This is a culmination for an American original. "I could never, ever, ever be here as an athlete," he said. So here he sat at the Olympics' Main Press Center, talking about the women's teams' 33-game, four-gold-medals win streak, discussing six of his former UConn Huskies on the squad and basically revealing an opportunity he didn't see coming. So one day in April, 2009, Auriemma's phone rang in his office at the University of Connecticut, and Callan told him he was hired. Carol Callan, the women's national team director had the most to say, and Auriemma isn't 804-129 (.862) by accident. It turns out there wasn't a committee, at least not in a traditional manner. "I did think that if there was a committee that picked the coach, then the chances of me getting picked were zero," Auriemma said Thursday. Getting to be national team coach is, quite often, a popularity contest.
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