Lindsay Whalen is like family to Carly Thibault-DuDonis.
Fourteen years ago, Carly’s father, Mike, drafted Whalen when he was the coach of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. Since then, Whalen and the Thibaults have grown close and have followed each other’s paths, as Whalen has become one of the WNBA’s all-time greats, Mike Thibault has moved to coach the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, and Carly has spent the last two seasons as an assistant coach for the Mississippi State women’s basketball team.
When Whalen was hired as the new women’s basketball coach at Minnesota, her alma mater, Thibault-DuDonis immediately believed Whalen could do great things in her first job as a head coach.
“I looked at it as an opportunity to do something really, really special and prove people wrong and build a program up the same way Johnnie (Harris) and Vic (Schaefer) have done at Mississippi State,” Thibault-DuDonis said Wednesday.
It didn’t take long for Whalen to reach out to see if her longtime family friend would join her at Minnesota. On Monday, Whalen announced the hiring of Thibault-DuDonis and Kelly Roysland as the first members of her coaching staff.
Thibault-DuDonis spent most of Tuesday traveling from Mississippi to Minnesota. She will work as Minnesota’s recruiting coordinator and be involved in numerous facets of the program much like she was in her two seasons under Schaefer at MSU.
“It is an important step in my growth as a coach to be a part of something like that,” Thibault-DuDonis said of Whalen’s coaching staff.
Thibault-DuDonis said she loved her time in Starkville and working for Schaefer. She thanked him for allowing her to do so many things as an assistant coach, but she said the decision to leave MSU for Minnesota is a good move for her family. Thibault-DuDonis said she has family in that part of the country and that the move will offer her husband, Blake, more opportunities in broadcasting in a bigger market.
As for basketball, Thibault-DuDonis is confident Whalen will be able to help Minnesota reclaim its position among the nation’s elite teams.
“The exciting part about it is she has seen what it looks like to get Minnesota to the Final Four, and she led that charge as a player,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “Maybe she hasn’t been a head coach, but she has plenty of leadership qualities that will really translate in her new coaching role.”
Schaefer praised Thibault-DuDonis for her work in all facets of the program.
“We really appreciate her two years here and all her hard work and due diligence, and we wish her the very best,” Schaefer said. “If you have good people, there’s always going to be a demand, and obviously we have got good people, so that is the tradeoff. I would rather have it that way than the other way.”
Thibault-DuDonis is the third assistant coach he has had to replace in his time at MSU. Aqua Franklin left to become associate head coach at Kansas, while Elena Lovato left to become head coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith. Like he did in finding replacements for those coaches, Schaefer said he would take his time to make sure the next coach is a good fit with the current members of his staff and a good fit basketball wise.
Thibault-DuDonis believes the relationship she has with Whalen will allow her to play a similar role to the one she performed the last two seasons in MSU’s runs to back-to-back NCAA title games.
“Coach Schaefer has really led me and guided me in recruiting and given me a lot of experience in recruiting to take a position that I can help somebody else now,” Thibault-DuDonis said.
A former standout player and assistant coach at Minnesota, Roysland spent the past four seasons as the Macalester (St. Paul) head women’s basketball coach.
Thibault-DuDonis joined MSU after two seasons on the staff at Eastern Michigan. She also worked as director of recruiting operations at Florida State. During her time with the Seminoles, she managed the team’s recruiting database and communication plan as well as assisting with the administration of the program’s basketball camps. She played collegiately at Monmouth from 2009-13.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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