A Guru Appreciation: Carly Thibault-DuDonis Earns A Glass Slipper

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — When our paths first crossed she was a local high school star spending her summers as a youth behind-the-scene helper on her dad’s WNBA team in the women’s basketball-crazed state of Connecticut.

Later she was a collegian not far from here to the southeast as a guard on then-coach Stephanie Gaitley’s Monmouth squad in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC).

Her older brother Eric went to Missouri, became dad’s assistant when he moved to the Washington Mystics after being shockingly let go by the Connecticut Sun, ultimately winning a long-sought league title coaching players with last names as Delle Donne, Cloud,  and Toliver.

A few months ago, the older brother down the stretch got to coach a few games in Dad’s absence on an under-manned injury-riddled squad and one could argue that by not winning those closely-fought contests, fate took the consequence of the losses just missing the playoffs and resulting in obtaining the top draft pick rights in this spring’s WNBA draft.

Don’t feel bad for brother, though. His name has come up in recent coach openings and is at some places considered the Mystics’ heir apparent when dad moves on.

Growing up as the years moved along, meant marriage, and her husband Blake DuDonis is cutting his teeth coaching Wisconsin-River Falls.

After her undergrad days as a player, she turned up first as an assistant on a Mississippi State powerhouse that landed in the NCAA Final Four.

She began being named on lists of 30-under-30 future head coaching prospects.

Then it was on to another hot-bed state in Minnesota, Minneapolis to be exact, on the Big Ten representative staff coached by a former Gophers all-American who became a star on her Dad’s Connecticut squad and then on the multi-championship Minnesota Lynx besides being an Olympic gold medalist.

On Thursday night, tired of being knocked out by his local D-1 group Covid-caused cancellations, the Guru intended to be at Maryland with an early-tip playing one of the Guru locals in Penn State.

But it turned out, Amtrak had cancelled the one train back that was catchable at a still reasonable hour.

So might as well alert the Rutgers folks I’ll be by, since they were still alive.

In the interim between then and tip-off time, Minnesota coach Lindsay Whalen underwent emergency, but successful, surgery on her appendix, and Carly was named to run the squad.

You might say, it was an NBA Becky Hammon moment in the NCAA.

But it had unknowns beings Minnesota hadn’t played in a couple of weeks with Northwestern opting out over Covid issues involving the Wildcats.

It also as often happens also put Guru on the scene for an NCAA oddity moment — a game in which neither side head coach was in the arena since prior to the season’s start it was revealed Hall of Fame Rutgers coach was departing from daily active duty for the season over Covid concerns (talk about foresight) and associate head coach Tim Eatman becoming interim coach.

Record-wise neither team had won a Big Ten event in the early start of conference play.

Though Rutgers has been one of the Guru’s long-covered locals through the Theresa Grentz-C. Viv eras, he did send a short well-wish of good luck off the long-established friendship.

To the bulk of of the women’s media world Thursday night involving the games that were played, this matchup was a back seat affair to some hot games in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences.

Ah, but where the Guru shows up, there are at times when the Women’s Basketball Gods decides to get those affairs labelled “special,” and considering that if Carly DuDonis wins this event, given all just described, it certainly would be special.

And so it began in an arena with a small, but spirited crowd, a portion of which, was in the house backing the visiting Gophers.

As has been frequently in Big Ten games, Rutgers quickly fell behind, Minnesota carried basically by Jasmine Powell on the front end and Kadi Sissoko the equivalent of a baseball bullpen flame-thrower.

Meanwhile, wire-to-wire the Gophers had a tenacious defense, answering any attempted rally, like the one on the Guru’s last visit here when Harvard spent a fourth quarter and overtime melting down from what was an 18-point lead.

In the waning moments with the Guru already declaring “elected” for Minnesota (8-7, 1-2 Big Ten) ahead of the 62-49 final score, a text for comment was sent to dad Mike Thibault.

Dad in the same response wanted, placing a smiling emoji, to opt out, calling it “her night,” but did admit, “”I’m proud of my daughter - it’s a tough situation to step into and she was very poised.”

Powell finished with a game-high 19 points while Sissoko scored all her 11 in the final stanza.

The team was able to make use of the time off to deal with readying for Rutgers (7-9, 0-4) and threw a zone defense forcing the Scarlet Knights to shoot what became very mediocre from the outside with an overall 32.8 field percentage and downing just 3-of-12 from deep.

And so it was off to what once was the baseball locker room where the Guru spent so many postgames in the first glory era under Grentz.

Whalen had been in touch with the team beforehand and Powell related to Kent Yougblood of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, “It was ‘You guys got this.’ We felt her spirit the entire game.”

Asked if she had spoke to Whalen yet when Thibault-DuDonis emerged from what sounded like quite the lively celebration, she said, “Oh gosh, I haven’t even had a chance to look at my cell,” which by then was overloading with congratulatory messages.

“They made a couple of runs, got a couple of ‘0’ boards, which was just a big focus for us, they’ve been in every game, so take care of the ball, but I thought our team stayed really poised, taking great shots,” Thibault-DuDonis said.

With the Women’s Final Four to be in Minneapolis, she said she’s ready to be her own welcoming committee, perhaps even make a run like they did when Whalen was a player on the Gophers.

Meanwhile, Eatman does not sound yet like a frustrated coach over Rutgers’ performance in the money games, — losing to No. 10 Maryland among them perhaps forgivable but last time out a comeback from a 21-point deficit at Purdue on Sunday only to then lose at the buzzer could have a “downer” effect, but, at least unlike a year ago, the Scarlet Knights are playing as opposed to the long layoff caused by protocol issues.

In the fourth quarter against Minnesota, which was held to 29 percent shooting in the second half, Rutgers moved within six points before the Gophers came back with a 7-2 run to preserve the victory.

Shug Dickson, who was absent the previous game, had 17 points, shooting 7-for-13 with the three made from deep, while also dishing three assists, while Osh Brown, had 13 points and 10 rebounds, her NCAA active career-leading 53rd double double.

Chyna Cornwell had eight points and eight rebounds.

“”She’s hungry. She plays within herself,” Eatman said of Cornwell. “She’s doing a very fine job on the back side and we need her to do that. But we have to find a way to give her more minutes. She’s been productive when she’s played. But again, when you play a lot of minutes you have to be in shape. And when you’ve been away but we’ll handle it. We’ll manage the challenge and our kids are getting better.”

As for comparing dealing with the pandemic this season to last, Eatman said, “Thirty-five days last year. What we have to understand is as our country goes through this, we can’t make excuses over who’s playing and who’s not. The good thing is we’re playing. But that doesn’t do anything with winning and losing. We need to win, so hopefully we can get them in position for being fit.

“It’s deflating when you miss a wide-open layup. It takes the air out of the room when you miss and you have to tough it out when you miss. One thing you can always do is play defense.”

Next up is a visit Sunday to No. 8 Michigan at noon on Fox Sports.

Bad night for the locals: Along with the Rutgers loss, the other two teams in the local mix who played also fell in separate ways.

In the other Big Ten game involving a local, No. 10 Maryland at home in the XFinity CENTER in College Park, Md., pummeled Penn State 106-78, the Lady Lions falling to 7-6 overall and 1-2 in the league.

The Terrapins improved to 11-4, of which two losses occurred with a shortened roster, and 3-1 in the league.

Makenna Marisa had 29 points for PSU, of which 24 were scored in the second half. Leilani Kapinus scored 12, while Shay Hagans had 10 points, while Anna Camden had nine points and six rebounds.

Maryland’s Diamond Miller scored 24 points, shooting 10-of-13 from the field. Ashley Awusu scored 20, Shayanne Sellers had 17, and Angel Reese had 15 points and 14 rebounds.

Michigan is next up, the Lady Lions off all week until Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Bryce Jordan Center in State College. The B1G+ subscription network.

Rider, meanwhile, came off a long Covid-cause break and built a 21-point lead at one of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference preseason leading picks in Manhattan before getting decimated in the fourth quarter 31-9 in the Jaspers’ Draddy Gym and losing 63-58 in the MAAC in Riverdale, N.Y.

Down 49-32 with one 10-minute quarter left, the Jaspers (7-5, 2-1) took off on a17-2 run.

Lenaejha Evans scored for the Broncs 3-9, 1-2), extending the lead to 55-52, then Dee Dee Evans tied it with a long shot with 1:11 left in regulation.

Manhattan 8-for-10 from the line the rest of the way for the win.

“It’s something we need to work on,” said Rider coach Lynn Milligan. “It’s really bearing down on those last 10 minutes, especially those last five coming out of the final media timeout.

“You have to play defense and you have to rebound. When the game is on the line, you need to come up with a stop and a rebound and we didn’t do that tonight.”

Anna Ekerstedt had a career-high four blocked shots for the Broncs, who had a career-high 12 points, while Evans scored 14.

Dee Dee Evans scored 17 for Manhattan and Brazil Harvey-Carr had 12 as did reserve Sydney Watkins.

The only solace is preseason favor Quinnipiac had been taking taking losses and did another Thursday to Monmouth at home 70-60 to fall to 6-6 overall and 1-2 in the MAAC.

Rider hosts Fairfield at home Saturday night at 7 p.m. in Alumni Gym in Lawrenceville, N.J.

Meanwhile, Penn over Covid issues postponed the two-night visit to Cornell and Columbia, which also pulled out of  Princeton for Friday in the Ivy League. Cornell will host the Tigers as scheduled on Saturday.

La Salle replaced the postponed Sunday visit to Massachusetts, going to Fordham, which lost the original Rhode Island visit.

Nationally noted: Won’t go into a lot of detail since by now most of you read the action elsewhere — hey it’s 625 am and in my world still Thursday — so for the record, among ranked teams, in the ACC, No. 3 Louisville routed visiting Pittsburgh 81-39; No. 5 NC State handed No. 19 North Carolina its first overall loss at home in Raleigh; but No. 16 Georgia Tech at No. 17 Duke was postponed, while in the SEC; No. 21 Kentucky at home celebrated with the return of Rayne Howard and her 30 points to upset visiting No. 15 Georgia 84-76; No. 1 South Carolina outlasted No. 13 LSU 66-60 rally in a battle featuring Hall of fame coaches Dawn Staley of the visiting Gamecocks ending a long win streak by new LSU coach Kim Mulkey, who had been on a long stint at Baylor; No. 7 Tennessee beat visiting No. 25 Texas A&M 73-45 in Knoxville, with losing coach Gary Blair at the postgame conference who is retiring this season giving a tribute to the late Lady Vol legendary coach Pat Summitt; In the Big 10 unranked Northwestern upset host No. 22 Iowa 77-69; and No. 18 BYU in the West Coast Conference beat host San Francisco 76-64.

Elsewhere among tracker teams on the Guru original radar comoposite, Mississippi State in the SEC won at Alabama 65-62, while host Vanderbilt beat Arkansas 54-51. Missouri topped visiting Auburn 72-63 in overtime; Horizon favorite IUPUI at home beat visiting Green Bay 51-49; while out West, UC Irvine beat UC Davis at home 76-59; and Montana State hosting Idaho was postponed.

Looking Ahead: locally, Friday on the road Drexel gets started in the CAA visiting College of Charleston; while Saturday Temple is slated to visit Cincinnati in the American.

On Friday in the PAC-12 Oregon visits defending NCAA champion and No. 2 Stanford 10 p.m.; while Washington is at host Arizona State and Washington State is at No. 4 Arizona.

And that’s your Friday post.