College - St. Martin's
Returning for his seventh season with the Connecticut Sun, Mike Thibault is firmly established as one of the premier coaches in the WNBA.

Named WNBA Coach of the Year for the second time in his career in 2008, Thibault led the third-youngest team in the league to 21 victories and its sixth straight berth in the playoffs. The Sun have never failed to qualify for the postseason under Thibault, who owns the second best winning percentage (.623) among active coaches.

Determined to re-tool after a disappointing first-round exit from the 2007 playoffs, Thibault brought in 10 new players to start the 2008 season. Offseason trades for Tamika Whitmore, Barbara Turner and Tamika Raymond gave the Sun a new core of veterans while six rookies also made the opening night roster.

Connecticut’s youth, combined with the offseason departure of veteran All Stars Katie Douglas, Nykesha Sales and Margo Dydek led to predictions the Sun would struggle in 2008. Instead, the team jumped out to an 8-1 start, matching its best record over the first nine games of a season in franchise history. Connecticut was the last team in the league to lose on the road, the last to lose two games in a row, and the first to qualify for the playoffs, earning a spot in the postseason with a win at Atlanta on August 29th.

Despite starting two rookies in 28 of 34 games, the Sun established new records for total points (2,690), scoring average (79.1 ppg.), made threes (221) and three-point shooting percentage (33.0) while becoming the third team in franchise history to win more than 20 games in a season.

Eleven different players, including five rookies, started at least one game for the Sun in 2008. A total of 14 players – Connecticut added Erin Phillips and Svetlana Abrosimova to the roster following the Olympic Break – logged minutes.

Thibault’s accomplishments were particularly impressive considering he was in the midst of completing a commitment to USA Basketball that began in February of 2006, when he was named an assistant coach on the staff of Anne Donovan. Thibault helped the USA Women’s Basketball team win the bronze medal at the World Championships in Sao Paolo, Brazil in September of 2007, and the gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August of 2008.

Named head coach of the Connecticut Sun on March 7, 2003 – following a four-year stint with the Milwaukee Bucks – Thibault inherited a squad that had never finished above .500. He guided his first team, picked to finish last in the Eastern Conference by many pundits, to an 18-16 record and the first playoff series win in franchise history, a sweep of the favored Charlotte Sting.

Since the beginning of the 2003 season, Connecticut has won 127 regular season games, tied with Detroit for the most victories in that six-year span. Connecticut and Sacramento are the only teams to have six straight winning seasons since 2003, and Connecticut, Sacramento and Detroit are the only teams to qualify for every postseason over that period.

In 2007, Thibault became the third-fastest coach in league history to reach 100 career regular season wins, achieving that milestone in just 159 games with a victory over Houston on July 22nd.

In 2006, Thibault earned his first Coach of the Year Award after leading Connecticut to its second straight 26-8 season, its third straight Eastern Conference regular season title and its fourth straight trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. No other Eastern Conference team has ever won 26 games in a season.

During the 2005 and 2006 seasons, Connecticut was 52-16 (.764) in the regular season. Only Los Angeles and Houston have ever won more games in consecutive seasons. The Sun won 12 straight games from July 16-August 9 of 2006, the third longest winning streak in league history. Ten of those wins came without Nykesha Sales, who was out with an Achilles tendon injury. The Sun were 11-1 overall without Sales, and also went 2-0 without Taj McWilliams-Franklin.

In 2005, Thibault guided the Sun to the best regular season record ever posted by an Eastern Conference team, a 26-8 mark that included a remarkable 13-1 record against the Western Conference. Connecticut’s 12-2 start over 14 games was one of the quickest in WNBA history, topped only by Houston’s 13-1 start in 1998. The Sun clinched their second straight Eastern Conference regular season title with five games remaining on their schedule. Not since 2001 had a team won as many regular season games as Connecticut did in 2005.

Connecticut went on to repeat as Eastern Conference Champions, sweeping Detroit and Indiana before falling to Sacramento in the WNBA Finals, the first playoff series in league history played under a best-of-five format.

In 2004, Thibault led a Sun team that was a near-unanimous preseason pick to finish last to within one made basket of a WNBA championship. After finishing first in the Eastern Conference during the regular season for the first time in franchise history, the Sun beat Washington and New York on the way to their first Eastern Conference Championship. Connecticut won the first game of the WNBA Championship series with Seattle before eventually falling in three games.

Connecticut’s 2004 run was unexpected because Thibault had rebuilt the team following a 2003 run to the Eastern Conference Finals. Concluding the Sun needed to get younger and more athletic, Thibault risked taking a temporary step back to get better. He carried five rookies on the 2004 roster, lowering the average age of his team from 28.4 to 24.2. Among those rookies was Lindsay Whalen, who averaged more than 30 minutes per game as the starting point guard.

The Sun also excelled despite losing starting forward Brooke Wyckoff to a season-ending knee injury on May 3, 2004. Wyckoff and the five other veterans who did not return to the team averaged a combined 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 7.6 assists per game in 2003.

Under Thibault, Connecticut has been one of the most aggressive teams in the league in the offseason, not hesitating to make deals that improve the roster. Eight of the 10 trades in franchise history have occurred since the team relocated from Orlando to Connecticut before the 2003 season. Among the players acquired by Thibault as a result of these trades are All Stars Lindsay Whalen, Asjha Jones and Margo Dydek.

Thibault entered the NBA ranks in 1978 as a scout for the Los Angeles Lakers, and was promoted to director of scouting and assistant coach in 1980. The Lakers won two World Championships (1980, 1982) during his tenure. From 1982-1986, he was an assistant coach and director of scouting for the Chicago Bulls during a period when the franchise drafted Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley, while also acquiring John Paxson.

From 1987-88 Thibault was the general manager and head coach of the Calgary 88’s of the World Basketball League (WBL), earning WBL Coach of the Year honors in 1988.

In 1989, Thibault began a remarkable eight-year run as general manager and head coach of CBA’s Omaha Racers. The Racers made the playoffs each season (1989-97) under his watch, bringing home a CBA title in 1993, and a return to the finals in 1994. Thibault was named 1993 Sportsman of the Year by the Omaha sportscasters, and ranks sixth on the CBA all-time coaching victory list (236).

In March of 1995, he coached the silver medal winning USA National Team at the Pan American Games, and in August of 1993, he served as head coach of the gold medal-winning USA National Team at the World Championship Qualifying Tournament in Puerto Rico.

He spent the 1997-98 season as a scout for the Seattle Sonics.

Born in St. Paul Minnesota, Thibault was raised in Saratoga, Calif. He graduated from Bellarmime College Prep in 1968.

Mike and his wife Nanci are active participants in the community, and have been staunch supporters of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation since Mike’s days with the Omaha Racers. In 2007, the Thibaults were co-chairs of GREAT STRIDES, the primary fundraiser of the CF Foundation’s Connecticut Chapter. Mike and Nanci have two children. Eric will be a senior at the University of Missouri, and is a member of the Sun coaching staff while Carly will be a freshman at Monmouth University next fall, attending on a basketball scholarship.