By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
The answer to the question that Mike Thibodeaux doesn’t know is “Arizona 93, St. Peter’s (Pa.) 80.”
The answer to the question Thibodeaux does know is “Salt Lake City, 1991.”
If you want to know where and when Thibodeaux refereed his first NCAA Tournament game, he will have no trouble remembering. If you want to know who won the game, you might be in for a little bit of wait. In fact, just remembering the teams who played in that game is a little dicey for him. “It might have been UCLA,” he says.
Which is exactly how it should be. Almost everybody at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City 31 years ago had at least a passing interest in the outcome of that opening round game. Except for Thibodeaux and the other two officials.
But that game was the start of an impressive run of NCAA appearances for Thibodeaux, who brought his striped shirt to every March Madness from 1991 to 2009. Not sure what this means, but for perspective’s sake, Roy Williams is the only coach to do that during the same span.
Thibodeaux had done some games in the National Invitation Tournament when he got the call to carry his whistle to Salt Lake City.
“There’s a lot of nervousness with it,” he says. “But it is exciting when you get that first call.”
Though he had already been a referee for five years, no amount of preparation could quite get Thibodeaux ready for the NCAA Tournament experience.
“You are wide-eyed and you get in there and see these other guys who have worked in the bigger leagues and you just want to take it all in,” Thibodeaux says. “But at the same time you want to hold your own so they know you did a great job.”
After calling the Arizona-St. Francis game (a 2 vs. 15 matchup), he didn’t exactly hurry home. “I stayed an extra day,” he says. “I wanted to watch some extra games to see how the other guys worked and get the full effect of the tournament.”
Thibodeaux started officiating college basketball in 1986 in the TransAmerica, Southland and Sun Belt Conferences. He later went on to call games in the SEC for 28 years, plus a few years in the ACC, Big 12 and Big 10.
But there is no easy road to get the call for NCAA Tournament games. “It’s like the teams … they don’t actually have the best 68 teams (in the tournament),” he says. “Same goes for the referees; they don’t really have the best 96 referees, but they do try to get guys from different leagues just like you have teams from different conferences.
“But it’s truly an honor for the 96 who get to go,” he adds. “The selection process now is probably a lot better than it was years ago. There are regional coordinators and a national director who determines whether they are tournament ready. When you get selected, it’s off your body of work from the entire season.”
At first, tournament referees are assigned one game in March Madness. Thibodeaux didn’t get a two-game schedule until the mid-1990s. He had a couple of Regional semifinal games, including one in 2000 when he called Purdue’s upset win over Gonzaga in Albuquerque.
“That was really an exciting atmosphere calling a game at The Pit,” he says. “What was exciting was to go to places you hadn’t been. Places like Sacramento, Ohio State, Buffalo, Greensboro, among others.”
Thibodeaux kept calling games until he had double hip replacement in 2009. “I had my run,” he says. “I went a good number of years.”
During that time, he worked the midnight shift at KCS Railroad. “Back then, when Delta flew big jets into Shreveport, I could arrange my schedule so I could do a game at Georgia, get to the airport at 11, gain an hour (in the time zone change), arrive back at 11:30 and be at work at the railroad on time,” he says.
Now retired, Thibodeaux still stays active as the assignment secretary for high school football and baseball for the Shreveport Association and for basketball in the Ruston Association.
He is also thankful that he is not remembered for all the wrong reasons as a NCAA Tournament official.
“There are some guys who are always remembered for the calls they made or didn’t make,” Thibodeaux says. “Or the ones where you had a confrontation with the coach. But I don’t think there was one call that sticks out. It was a lot of fun.”
