Situational approach
East Lyme grad Thibault-dudonis steps in as coach of Minnesota with Whalen sidelined
All eyes were on her. That’s the thing Carly Thibaultdudonis noticed the most about stepping in as head coach for the University of Minnesota women’s basketball team.
Thibault-dudonis, the associate head coach at Minnesota, spent her middle and high school years in Connecticut when her father Mike was coaching the WNBA’S Connecticut Sun. She took over for Minnesota head coach Lindsay Whalen after Whalen had an emergency appendectomy last Tuesday.
On Thursday, Minnesota won its first Big Ten game, 62-49, at Jersey Mike’s Arena in Piscataway, New Jersey. On Sunday, Thibault-dudonis, 30, was still in charge when Minnesota faced No. 10 Maryland. The Gophers (8-8) lost 87-73.
Whalen is expected to return Tuesday.
“There were parts of it I was nervous about,” Thibaultdudonis, an East Lyme High graduate, said Friday after the Rutgers win. “My first pregame speech. I’ve never really called a meaningful timeout before. You want to do right by your team and put them in the best situation to be successful.”
The most nerve-racking aspect, she said, was the ‘all eyes on you,’ whether it was the pregame speech or timeouts, constantly making sure she is saying the right things, addressing the right things, making the right adjustments.
“That’s where you rely on the people around you to make sure you’re taking the right steps in those moments,” Thibault-dudonis said.
Assistant coaches Kelly Curry, a former interim head coach at Minnesota in 2014, and Shimmy Gray-miller, a 20-year coaching veteran, helped immensely.
“I work in a great situation with Coach [Whalen] where she just allows all of us assistants to have a voice,” she said. “It was comfortable to be able to step up and coach, and I felt very lucky with two seasoned coaches around me in Coach Kelly and Coach Shimmy — I leaned on them a lot. And a huge credit to our team for not
batting an eye and continuing our preparation as usual.”
Her mother Nanci and father Mike, who currently coaches the WNBA’S Washington Mystics, were at Rutgers on Thursday. They don’t get to see too many games in person so they weren’t missing this one, even though there was a snowstorm forecast.
“I was like, ‘Too bad, we’re going,’ ” Nanci said, laughing. “It wasn’t bad. I couldn’t imagine not being there.”
Mike was probably more nervous than his daughter.
“When you coach your own team you don’t get edgy or nervous, but watching the kids do stuff, I’m way more nervous than when I coach,” Mike said.
“I noticed she started to get more comfortable at the end of the game,” Nanci said.
“It helps when you’re up 10,” Mike said.
Whalen and the Thibaults go way back. Mike coached the Sun when the team moved to Connecticut until 2012 and he drafted Whalen, an All-america point guard at Minnesota, in the first round of the WNBA draft in 2004. Thibault-dudonis remembered watching her play at the University of Minnesota in a tournament in the Bahamas during Whalen’s senior year.
“I can remember learning from her game,” Thibault-dudonis said. “I remember trying to learn her infamous spin move to her mid-range jumper. I tried to kind of tried to steal that at a young age. I don’t think I ever quite mastered it. I got to rebound for her. My dad was working her out or [assistant coach] Bernadette [Mattox], so I got to watch how she worked.”
One year, Whalen stayed in Connecticut over the winter to rehabilitate an ankle injury and spent a lot of time with the
Thibaults.
“Carly was a freshman and Eric [her brother, now an assistant coach for the Mystics] was a senior and they kind of all hung out together,” Mike said. “Lindsay was
kind of like a big sister to her at that point.”
In high school, Thibault-dudonis’ East Lyme basketball team went to the Class L state championship game her junior year and she went on to play at Monmouth. Her first job out of college was working as the director of recruiting operations for Florida State. She then moved on to the coaching staff at Eastern Michigan, then Mississippi State, where the Bulldogs went to their first Final Four and upset Uconn in the national semifinals in 2017.
In 2018, Whalen became the head coach at Minnesota and asked Mike if Carly would be interested in being an assistant.
“That’s a conversation you’ll have to have with her,” Mike told Whalen. “But I think she would be open to it because of your relationship.”
Thibault-dudonis said yes. She became the associate head coach in May 2020.
“[Whalen]’s so genuine,” Thibault-dudonis said. “She really makes you feel like you’re working with her. I love our staff and our camaraderie. And she’s a winner. It takes time when you’re building a program, but I don’t doubt we’ll get it done here.”
After Thursday’s game, she walked into the locker room and the players sprayed her with water bottles and chanted “Car-ly, Car-ly!”
“It was one of those things in life that’s really special,” Nanci said.