Minnesota women’s basketball head coach Lindsay Whalen has announced the first two members of her staff in Kelly Roysland and Carly Thibault-DuDonis as assistant coaches.
“Being a first-time head coach I needed people that are familiar with this territory and know what it’s all about right off the bat,” Whalen said. “Kelly has been a head coach and Carly has been a recruiting coordinator so I felt like we needed people in here as soon as possible with those backgrounds to help get things going. I feel like those two really wanted to be here and were passionate about what we were thinking about for this program’s future.
“I think that they are going to do great and will complement each other well and work really well together. They’re both just great people and they’re going to be great representatives of the university.”
A former standout player and assistant coach at Minnesota, Kelly Roysland spent the past four seasons as the Macalester (St. Paul) head women’s basketball coach. In 2016-17, the Scots went 11-14, the program’s highest win total in five years. Roysland came to Macalester prior to the 2014-15 campaign after serving as the interim head coach (2014) and an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota for four seasons (2010-14).
“Kelly’s experience here at Minnesota as both a player and a coach were huge for me; she knows the state and the university well” Whalen said. “She’s been a head coach for the last four years at Macalester and done a great job there. Kelly is one of the most hardworking, loyal and trustworthy people that I’ve ever met, both as a teammate and in my interactions with her over the last several years. She’s really impressed me with those qualities and exemplifies them every day.”
While at Minnesota, Roysland worked with the Gophers’ guards, as well as having responsibilities with scouting and recruiting. She aided Minnesota in securing the 17th-ranked recruiting class in the nation in 2011 and the 34th-ranked recruiting class nationally in 2010. She also helped guide the team’s guards to numerous accolades, including All-Big Ten honors six times, as well as earning WBCA All-Region and WBCA Honorable Mention All-America honors.
“I’m thrilled and honored to be back at the University of Minnesota,” Roysland said. “I loved my time here as a student-athlete and certainly the time that I was coaching here. To come back and work with someone of Lindsay’s caliber in terms of what she’s accomplished in the basketball world is very exciting and a dream scenario to have played out.”
Prior to returning to Minnesota, Roysland was an assistant coach at North Dakota State University. She was hired at NDSU in June of 2008 and helped the Bison post back-to-back 16-13 records, including a combined mark of 23-13 in the Summit League.
A native of Fosston, Minn., Roysland was a four-year letterwinner in basketball for the Gophers from 2004-07, joining Whalen on the team’s run to the 2004 Final Four and serving as a team captain as a senior. Roysland also played one year of volleyball as a fifth-year senior in 2007.
Roysland finished her basketball career at Minnesota ranked 12th (currently 19th) on Minnesota’s all-time scoring list with 1,074 career points. She averaged 8.5 points per game over 126 contests for the Gophers, including a team-high 13.2 points per game during her senior season in 2006-07.
Roysland, whose father is the head women’s basketball coach at Division II Minnesota-Crookston, earned her bachelor’s degree in sport management from Minnesota in 2007. She went on to receive a master’s degree in exercise science from Minnesota in 2009. She married Eric Curry in August of 2014, and the couple has one son, Brekken.
Carly Thibault-DuDonis (pronounced TEE-bow doo-DON-iss) spent the past two seasons on the Mississippi State coaching staff where she helped the Bulldogs to the Final Four and national title game in both of her seasons in Starkville.
“I’ve known Carly for a long time and she’s had a pretty fast rise as an assistant coach and a recruiting coordinator in helping get Mississippi State to back-to-back national title games and selling out their arena, “Whalen said. “She’s been a part of a real success story there, and I think she’ll be able to bring that knowledge and passion that she has for the game here. She’s a go-getter and a hard worker.”
This past season, Mississippi State won a nation’s-best 37 games en route to winning the program’s first Southeastern Conference championship and advancing to the national championship game for the second-straight year.
“I’m thankful to Lindsay and the University of Minnesota for the opportunity to join her,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “I’m excited about Lindsay’s vision for Minnesota women’s basketball and to help her get the program back to a place where it’s competing for Big Ten championships and Final Four appearances year after year.
“I’ve known Lindsay since she was drafted into the WNBA in 2004 and I have yet to meet someone as competitive, team-oriented and dedicated as she is. That, coupled with her leadership abilities, are going to make her a great head coach at Minnesota for years to come.”
In her first season working with the Bulldog guards and coordinating the program’s recruiting efforts, she helped land the nation’s 19th-ranked recruiting class while helping lead MSU to a then school-record 34 wins and the national title game in the program’s first Final Four appearance.
Thibault-DuDonis joined the Bulldogs following two seasons on the staff at Eastern Michigan. In her final season, she helped guide an EMU offense that scored 2,445 points, third-most in a season, and dished the seventh-most assists (435) en route to going 22-12 and advancing to the second round of the WNIT. The Eagles won 20 games in each of her two seasons in Ypsilanti, as the 2014-15 squad tied the school record for wins in a season with a 24-13 mark. That team advanced to the Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship before wrapping the year in the WNIT Round of 16.
Thibault-DuDonis made the move to EMU following a stint in Tallahassee as the 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. She concluded her playing career third in school history with 166-career 3-point field goals made. The East Lyme, Conn., native shot 37 percent from the three-point stripe in her career, but knocked down 40 percent as a junior and 44 percent in her final college season. She was also an outstanding shooter from the free-throw line, knocking down 75.3 percent over her four seasons.
Her father, Mike, was a longtime coach in the NBA before making the move to the WNBA. He was the head coach of the Connecticut Sun when the team drafted current Gophers head coach Lindsay Whalen in 2004, while he currently coaches the Washington Mystics. Thibault-DuDonis married Blake DuDonis in the summer of 2017.
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