The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Fairfield introduces Thibault-DuDonis
FAIRFIELD — Carly Thibault-DuDonis’ favorite two-word response to her parents actually became her nickname as a child.
“It was, ‘Yeah, but …’ ” Thibault-DuDonis’ mother, Nanci Thibault, said.
Maybe Yeahbut is more accurate — really quick like that, kind of how ThibaultDuDonis, introduced Tuesday as the sixth women’s basketball coach in Fairfield University history, spoke then and speaks now as a young adult.
“For those of you who don’t know me yet, I can be pretty stubborn, a little feisty, a little fiery,” she said.
A product of a family’s basketball life and her own unique experiences, Thibault-DuDonis, 30, is a head coach for the first time.
“I really enjoyed every stop I was at and made the most of where my feet were,” said Thibault-DuDonis, most recently an assistant under Lindsay Whalen at Minnesota. “I just wanted to continue to learn and grow as much as I could in my career, and it all came together to this point. And I do feel like I’m ready. … I took suggestions and learned a lot from everybody that I could. Each move that I made was very intentional for me to grow and learn from different styles.”
Nanci Thibault cried through Tuesday’s news conference at the Barone Campus Center from the front row, seated next to Blake DuDonis, Carly’s husband. Thibault-DuDonis’ father, Mike Thibault, coach of the WNBA’s Mystics, was in Washington, running training camp with Eric Thibault, Carly’s brother and a Mystics assistant.
Carly was just 11 when Mike Thibault became the first head coach in Connecticut Sun history in 2003.
“I was so excited because for so long my dad had always coached on the men’s side,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “So this was the first time I had gotten to see elite women’s athletes
and got for the first time to be around female coaches in (assistant) coach Bernadette Mattox, at the time. It was an awesome opportunity for me to learn the age old quote of, ‘If you can see her, you can be her.’ ”
Thibault-DuDonis was a standout player at East Lyme High before playing collegiately at Monmouth. She was the director of operations at Florida State under Sue Semrau (with former Sun player Brooke Wyckoff on staff as an assistant), an assistant under Tory Verdi (now UMass coach and a longtime close associate of Mike Thibault) at Eastern Michigan in 2015-16.
From there, ThibaultDuDonis spent two years as an assistant under Vic Schafer at Mississippi State, reaching the Final Four both years and endig UConn’s 111-game winning streak in a 2017 national semifinal. Thibault-DuDonis then moved on to Minnesota, where she has spent the past four seasons as an assistant to Whalen — whose professional career began with the Sun in 2004.
Now Thibault-DuDonis takes over for Joe Frager, who announced before last season that he would retire for health reasons before leading the Stags to their first conference championship since 1998 and their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2001.
Several current players were in attendance Tuesday. Those players — and Frager, who chose not to attend — where among the first acknowledged and congratulated by ThibaultDuDonis and athletic director Paul Schlickmann, who said, “As one journey ends, another chapter begins.”
“I think the sky is the limit,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “I heard Paul say recently that this is not the pinnacle; it’s a springboard to what’s next. And as we’ve seen in the NCAA Tournament, there are teams now at this level that can … make some noise in the tournament. That takes a lot of work. That’s not guaranteed . ... But I do think that’s something we can strive for.”
Thibault-DuDonis’ first team workout was scheduled for later Tuesday. Addressing players in the crowd, she said, “I know you didn’t come here for me, but I came here for you. I’ll give you everything I got.”
Several Fairfield players are in the transfer portal, including Lou Lopez-Senechal, who averaged 19.6 points last season as a senior and has indicated she would like to use her final season of eligibility elsewhere. Lopez-Senechal is being recruited by UConn and is scheduled to visit the Storrs campus in the coming days.
“She’s earned the right to go look at some of these cool schools,” ThibaultDuDonis said. “But she’s definitely open to seeing what we’re going to do here.”
Mike Thibault, named Mystics coach and general manager in late-2012, is the winningest coach in WNBA history. Eric has been on the Mystics staff since his father’s first season in 2013. He was promoted to associate head coach in 2018, the Mystics won their first WNBA title in 2019 and is the family’s hope and expectation and Eric will succeed his father as head coach.
“It was our life,” Nancy Thibault said. “I didn’t get sitters. When we moved to Connecticut, we rented in a place in Stonington called Lords Point. We were right on the water for one month while our house was being built. Mike would get up and leave to go coach his team and (both kids) were dressed, out the door, gone all day at practice with him and they would come back at night. That’s where they wanted to be.”
Blake DuDonis and Carly met while scouting players at an Ohio gym in 2014, while Blake was an assistant at Buffalo and Carly an assistant at Eastern Michigan. They married in 2017. Most recently head coach at Wisconsin-River Falls, he is expected to join the Fairfield staff as an assistant.
“I joke that I’m No. 4 out of four on the coaching power rankings,” DuDonis said. “It’s an incredible sounding board, to have those three to learn a lot from, just sitting around the kitchen table. But all four of us are also uniquely different from each other, so I think we’ve all benefitted from the others.”
Thibault-DuDonis is especially close to Whalen.
“I remember vividly, rebounding her for her, helping my dad with workouts for her,” ThibaultDuDonis said. “I remember trying to (emulate) her little spin move, fadeaway jumper. … She’s always been like family. When she got her ankle surgery her second year in the league, she stayed in Connecticut in the offseason so she was at our house a lot. There was a lot of video games and Jenga, and she came to my high school basketball games. I always joked that she was my dad’s favorite daughter, because I couldn’t go score 15 and 8 for him.”
Mike Thibault would chuckle at that. He’s as stubborn and sarcastic as his daughter. He had said that Fairfield better start the 11 a.m. press conference on time, so he could watch via livestream before the Mystics’ 11:30 practice, and his daughter joked later that he better have watched the whole thing because she didn’t mention him until 11:26.
“We could never work together,” Thibault-DuDonis said.
Nanci was nearby, still wiping away tears.
“She’s on her way, officially and totally on her way — and she did it her way,” Nanci said.