I think the reality lies in some combination of what doggydaddy and vtcwbuff have to say. Notre Dame obviously has a strategy to draw fouls, like Tennessee I would add, and there's nothing wrong with that. More credit to them!
However, a game like Louisville is puzzling. Louisville wants to draw fouls as well, but obviously did not succeed at Notre Dame. Like vtcwbuff, I don't believe officials are biased, and tendencies this way or that should be averaged out over enough games. Yet that Louisville game does stick out, not so much for fouls being called on them as would be expected from Notre Dame's strategy. Why did Notre Dame get so few?
I think back to the Abrosimova days. She tended to complain about officiating, and Auriemma reacted strongly to put a lid on it. Even as Auriemma himself has some sarcastic comments about officiating from time to time, his system calls for clamping down on his players' frustrations. There was a reason for this, he did not want his players to adopt a victim's mentality.
Quite frankly, I don't think McGraw's system is based on the same philosophy. Her players let the officials know, directly or indirectly, whenever they think something's amiss. I see people piling on Diggins here but I don't think that's fair. I think her reactions are fairly typical of an extreme competitor, but in Auriemma's system that's to be curbed, a la Abrosimova. In McGraw's system that's not. Perhaps it's even encouraged, considering her players to my eye seem to complain more than the players of other teams. Such a system risks the victim's mentality, but on the other hand the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Granted, this is all speculation on my part. It would be interesting to quantify the amount of complaints/disgruntled looks/etc. of different teams in a game.
