“(Senior forward Marquise Gray) said, ‘I wish we could’ve got you here as a player,’ and part of me wishes I was running out on the court,” Tibaldi said while taking a break from watching a North Carolina/Miami (Fla.) game on his laptop. “But at the same time I’m just so happy that I stuck around to be a part of this. This is an experience that hopefully I’ll draw upon when I get my own job and it’s something I’ll never forget.”

After playing for MSU in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons — one year after the 2005 Final Four team — Tibaldi graduated from MSU with a pre-law degree. Although the 24-year-old Traverse City native had always thought about coaching basketball, once he experienced two years with the Spartans he immediately knew he wanted to coach for a career.

So Tibaldi stayed in East Lansing, working as an unpaid graduate manager for MSU head coach Tom Izzo and the men’s basketball team. Because of his background as a player, Tibaldi — who will graduate in May with a master’s degree in sports administration — has been a valuable buffer between players and coaches.

Gray, one of seven players on the current roster to have had Tibaldi as a teammate, said it’s easier to both take criticism and advice from Tibaldi rather than the coaches.

“He can relate to some of the things because he’s went through it,” Gray said. “The coaches can’t relate to it because they went through some of the same things too, but at the same time the age difference kicks in and sometimes the coaches aren’t all going to tell you what you need to hear in a nice way.”

Tibaldi gets so much respect from players that they seek him out in the middle of a game when he’s not on the bench. During the early part of MSU’s 82-73 win over Connecticut on Saturday, junior forward Raymar Morgan was struggling at the free-throw line.

When a timeout was called, Morgan — who was a freshman in Tibaldi’s final season — looked into the stands and called out for Tibaldi, who enacted the shooting motion and pointed to his elbow, showing Morgan what he was doing wrong.

Morgan finished 4-for-6 from the line.

“We’ve spent time every day after practice shooting free throws in a routine, making a certain number of shots and kind of grooving his shot to where he felt comfortable,” Tibaldi said. “When he had his sickness, he kind of lost out on a lot of reps and he can’t get all that back. … I think it’s starting to pay off and he’s starting to feel more comfortable and we saw that last night.”

Both Gray and senior center Idong Ibok, another former teammate of Tibaldi, said they believe Tibaldi can be a great coach somewhere one day. Ibok even dropped the possibility of Tibaldi coaching in some capacity at MSU, where he has learned under Izzo.

After both playing and managing under Izzo — a coach known for his 14-2 record in the second game of a weekend in the NCAA Tournament — Tibaldi said Izzo definitely asks more of his players.

“I think it’s a little harder to play under him, because you don’t see the behind the scenes stuff and sometimes when you’re a player — until maybe you’re a senior — you don’t really get what he’s trying to teach,” Tibaldi said. “But now I see it from the other perspective and it’s crazy because we sit there and we sit in meetings with coaches and you really see it firsthand.”