It's true that Gaby Diaz's dance talent on this season's "So You Think You Can Dance" was pretty awe-inspiring. The tap dancer from Miami showed a thrilling versatility, captivating the audience — and the judges — whether she was taking on a hard-edged hip-hop throwdown or slipping into an emotional contemporary piece.

What was just as impressive was how Diaz got to be a contestant, and then the eventual winner, on "So You Think She Can Dance."

When she first auditioned for the Fox TV series in Dallas, the judges had a unanimous answer to her quest to move onto the new round: No.

That might have sent some dancers home to stew and to nurse their disappointment. Diaz, on the other hand, took their critiques that her solo was too busy and travelled to the next audition city of Detroit to try a different routine.

"The solo I prepared for my first audition — I think I was just trying to fit as much as I could into it to try to impress them, but it really wasn't something I was confident in," Diaz says. "The second time around, I just went with what my style is and what I'm comfortable in. All I had to do was be myself and it worked."

Indeed, this time, judges Nigel Lythgoe, Paula Abdul and Jason Derulo smiled. And applauded. And gave her a resounding yes.

Diaz went on to win the whole show, and now she and the other top 10 finalists are out on a 70-city tour that comes to the Mohegan Sun Arena on Sunday.

Last week, during a tour stop in Washington, D.C., Diaz spoke by phone about the "SYTYCD" experience.

"I have been a fan of the show since the first season, so I knew I always wanted to be on the show," the 19-year-old Cuban-American says.

She became the first tap dancer to win "SYTYCD" during its 12 seasons. Diaz's numbers, though, were anything but stereotypical tap routines. Neither were her musical choices; she danced one of her solos to Carlos Santana's "Oye Como Va."

She uses a lot of Latin rhythms, and that's something she pulls from her heritage.

"My dad plays percussion, and I come from a very musical family. I like songs that have rhythms and beats that are really interesting but also not too much so I can layer my rhythms over that as well," she says.

As for deciding to focus on tap when she was growing up, Diaz says, "It's kind of an underrated style and it's a difficult style, so a lot of people drop it in their dance training, and they kind of look past it. But it's still a dance style, and it's still a technique, and it takes time and practice. The few of us who can tap stick together." She laughs.

That's not to say she didn't study other styles; she did. Diaz says a dancer needs to be well-rounded in order to survive in the industry.

"I just love dance, period. If you want to work as a professional, you need to be able to do it all. You can't just specialize in one thing because nobody hires a one-trick pony," she says.

Diaz also knew that she wasn't going to get the chance to tap often on "SYTYCD," so she had to be trained in every other style. (On the series, dancers have to perform various styles, from ballroom to Bollywood to jazz.)

Diaz considered auditioning for "SYTYCD" as a contemporary dancer, but, she says, "there are about 500 brunette contemporary girls that auditioned at every city. The odds of auditioning as a tapper were just much higher."

During the season, Diaz got support and advice from her friend, Ricky Ubeda, who won "SYTYCD" last year.

This year was slightly different from Ubeda's in that the performers were divided into two groups: Team Stage and Team Street.

Diaz's favorite dance she did — the geisha-versus-ninja Pharside and Phoenix number danced with Joshua Allen — was the only straight hip-hop routine she got.

"It was my opportunity to cross over to the street side, and I felt like the street dancers were really proving themselves in the stage styles. That was a big moment where a stage dancer proved themselves in a street style," she says.

The most difficult, on the other hand, was her lyrical hip-hop Phillip Chbeeb routine with Virgil Gadson in the finale.

"By that point in the competition, my brain was fried, and the choreography ... was so intricate, and it took so much time," she says. "We really had to come together to make that duet happen ... People were expecting a lot out of us."

After her "SYTYCD" obligations, Diaz figures she'll move to Los Angeles and start her life there. What would she, in an ideal world, want to do?

"Honestly, anything that has to do with dance," she says. "I've been talking to Travis (Wall, her 'SYTYCD' mentor and an acclaimed dancer and choreographer), maybe something with Shaping Sound, his company, one day. I love working with (choreographer) Stacey Tookey as well."

She pauses and sums things up with what could just as well be her personal mantra: "Anything that keeps me dancing."

"So You Think You Can Dance," 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Mohegan Sun Arena; $39.50; mohegansun.com.