Basketball Takes 'The Judge' Worldwide, Home Again as Love of Game Lives On
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
August 13, 2026
He’s been everywhere, man.
Antoine Joubert, one of the best-known high school basketball players to come out of Michigan during the 1980s, has retired as a day-to-day basketball coach, but still gives back while continuing his lifelong dedication to the sport.
From being one of the most heavily recruited high school basketball players in the state, to playing four years at the University of Michigan and being drafted by the Detroit Pistons, to more than a decade of playing professionally overseas and in South America, Joubert remains humble and a fan of the game that has brought him so much in life.
“All of these things happened in my life because of basketball,” he said.
Joubert, who lives in Farmington, retired after the 2023-24 season after spending more than a decade coaching at Oakland Community College. He continues to host basketball camps – something he has done since 1992 – and has operated an AAU basketball program known as The Judge’s Court since 2006.
“The Judge” got the nickname from his older brother long before he was dominating opponents at Detroit Southwestern High School.
“My brother gave me that nickname,” he said. “I was in the locker room after a game and the media heard him call me that, and it stuck. ‘Here comes The Judge.’”
Joubert graduated in 1983 from Detroit Southwestern. He was Michigan’s Mr. Basketball Award winner and a McDonald’s All-American and recruited by nearly everyone from Indiana to Kentucky to UCLA before choosing Bill Frieder and Michigan.
As a high school junior, he averaged 30 points a game. He was even better as a senior, averaging 31.3 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists per contest. In his team’s 1983 Class A Semifinal, he scored 44 points. Two days later he scored 47 in the championship game against Flint Central, a tough 84-80 loss by the Prospectors that still ranks as one of the greatest Finals performances in state history.
“I was trying so hard to win that game,” Joubert said. “It was tough. Flint Central was a tough team.
“Playing in Michigan back those days was really great. The basketball was great, and there were some great coaches throughout the state. We’d go to camps and go play all over. We knew everybody, from Battle Creek to Lansing to Detroit, Ann Arbor, Traverse City. There was great basketball all over, and the kids all knew one another. I’ll never forget my high school career. I really loved it.”
Detroit Southwestern coach Perry Watson had coached Joubert’s uncle.
“He was like family,” Joubert said. “I knew him from when I was really young. He could play, too. He was a good ball player.”
The early 1980s were before the explosion of travel basketball, AAU programs and summer camps and shootouts. Joubert said while he did attend a few camps, including a national event in Indiana, he refined his skills at the Boys Club in Detroit and the legendary St. Cecilia gym that was a stopping point for some of the all-time greatest players from Michigan, from Dave Bing to Magic Johnson.
“That’s where our summer leagues were,” Joubert said. “Those were some great times.”
As his stock rose nationally, he was able to play against high school players like Patrick Ewing and Doc Rivers.
“That really opened my eyes to a lot of things about how tough basketball is,” he said.
He remembers some tremendous battles in the Public School League as well.
“That was a rough league at the time,” he said. “I mean, the talent that came through Detroit was amazing. Every PSL school had two or three guys that were going on to play Division I or Division II basketball. It was so competitive and they had really good coaches, guys that cared and helped players back then.”
Watson helped forge Joubert’s game, but it was his brother, Ezekiel Joubert Jr., who was perhaps Antoine’s greatest influence. He’s also who gave Antoine the nickname Judge, which stuck and continues to live on to this day.
“He was five years older than me, so he put it on me more than a few times,” Joubert said. “I wanted to be like him and do everything like him in sports. Once I could beat him, I thought I could beat anybody in the world.”
While Joubert gravitated to basketball, his first love in sports was baseball.
“That was the first sport I was really good at,” he said. “I had letters from the Tigers, the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox at 15 years old. Then, I stopped playing.”
After high school, he took his talents to Ann Arbor. His teammates during his four years included Roy Tarpley, Gary Grant and Glen Rice. He was a starter beginning his freshman season and twice was named honorable mention all-Big Ten.
Joubert was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in the sixth round of the 1987 draft but injured his knee during training camp and was released. He was signed by teams from a variety of leagues but found a home when he went to Belgium. In 1990 he went to Mexico to play and made that league’s all-star game. In 1992 he played in Venezuela, where he earned league MVP honors.
“I got lucky,” he said. “My career took off.”
While playing in Europe, Joubert said he got a firsthand look at 7-foot players who could dribble like guards and shoot 3-pointers.
“I could see where the NBA was going to be, and that’s what it is like today,” he said.
Thanks to basketball, Joubert travelled the world.
“It was great. I played in Belgium, France, Spain, Poland, Italy, all through South America, Venezuela, Mexico, in Asia. Ball took me all around the world. I visited Egypt and Africa. I visited Jerusalem and Israel. I mean, I’ve been everywhere. I learned so many other languages and other cultures and made so many friends. It was all because of basketball. I got to travel the world and see how beautiful the world is.”
Because of basketball, he also got an education. He has a master’s degree.
“Basketball has meant a lot to me, still does,” he said.
After retiring as a player, Joubert returned home and started his AAU program. Soon after, he was hired to coach men’s basketball at Oakland Community College.
“It was challenging,” he said. “But I loved it, loved helping kids. I had players that played for years overseas and kids that are really doing well in life. It’s a blessing to see them grow up and become men, get their degrees and move on.”
Joubert remains a big fan of basketball – especially high school basketball.
“I go to games all of the time,” he said. “I love the tournaments and spending all day in the gym, talking to my friends and watching basketball. I’ll travel. I’m really enjoying myself.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Antoine Joubert puts up a shot during his highlight-filled career at Detroit Southwestern. At right, Joubert coaches Oakland Community College’s men’s basketball team. (Middle) Joubert finished his tenure at OCC in 2023-24. (Southwestern photo courtesy of the Detroit News. OCC photos courtesy of the OCC athletic department.)
After Successful 'Sequel,' Suttons Bay's Hursey Embarking on Next Chapter
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
July 30, 2024
Thomas Hursey’s story is a Hollywood writer’s dream. He really is the stuff of sequels.
He could star in a remake of “Hoosiers” – titled in the singular as just “The Hoosier” – or maybe “Against All Odds II” is more fitting.
Hursey is a 2018 graduate of Suttons Bay High School. He was in a class of just 30 students. He grew up where there is snow on the ground, many argue, for six months of the year. He never played an Amateur Junior Golf Association tournament. And, he had zero scholarship offers from Division I colleges.
To top it off, basketball was his favorite sport in high school. It still is today.
Hursey, who admits he pretty much hated golf, switched his focus from the basketball court to the links midway through high school. He gave up on playing college basketball despite scoring 1,200 points during his career and achieving all-state status.
As a high school freshman, he helped a team comprised of only senior teammates win the Lower Peninsula Division 4 golf championship. He earned all-state in golf too and did receive a scholarship offer from Division II Ferris State University. He took it and excelled there.
So maybe his movie would be titled “The Bulldog.” Again, as a freshman at FSU, he had only senior teammates – and he was named Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year.
Hursey went on to pick up individual titles and conference player of the year awards as he led the Bulldogs to GLIAC championships and trips to the NCAA Division II Tournament.
Today, many say Hursey could make a run at the PGA Tour – and they may wonder why he doesn’t. Instead, he is about to join a Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical company and put his science and business background to work.
He has a biology degree from Ferris and a master’s in business from Indiana University. He has no interest in playing an individual sport after his stellar high school team sports career at Suttons Bay. His preference is to work hard with teammates and relish a leadership role similar to the one he had playing for the Norsemen in golf, basketball and tennis and while running cross country.
“I am much more of a team-sport guy,” Hursey explained. “I can’t really get the same motivation when it’s just an individual tournament – I need to be surrounded by team.”
Unlike most Big Ten golfers, professional golf was never really on Hursey‘s mind. Veteran IU golf coach Mike Mayer believes Hursey is capable of continuing his golf career, but respects his decision to take another path.
“Thomas was a gift to us,” Mayer said. “Very truthfully, Thomas Hursey might very well be at the top of the list as a great athlete, and great golfer, but more importantly a great person.
“I have had a lot of great student-athletes and you don’t rank them, but at the same time you know which ones stand out,” Mayer continued. “And Thomas Hursey simply stands out.”
Hursey’s parents are former college athletes, retired teachers and longtime high school sports coaches. His father Todd was his high school coach and is now the golf coach at Traverse City West. His mother Nicki was the Suttons Bay softball coach and coached siblings Laura and Jane on the softball field, where they became all-staters as well. Jane, a 2015 Suttons Bay graduate, was also an all-state basketball player. Laura, a 2020 grad, also starred in volleyball.
Thomas Hursey had a reputation as a nice competitor, and his parents treasure that even more than the success he found in high school and college sports.
“I always, and so did Todd, looked out more and hounded him be humble more than anything,” Nicki said. “He had talent and God-given gifts, but what made me so proud was just the way he acted on the course and the number of parents that come up to me and say what a wonderful son you have.”
Mayer, too, proudly recalls Thomas’ politeness and humility.
“As a coach, that’s at least as equally, if not more than rewarding than winning,” he said.
Mayer admits he secretly wishes Hursey would try pursuing professional golf, but respects his decision to end his golf career while it was still a team sport.
“Thomas Hursey has the athletic ability to play professional golf,” Mayer confirmed. “I fully understand his decision – he is going to be successful in whatever he chooses to do.”
Hursey had four top-20 and two top-10 outings for IU during his last season, including an 18th place finish at the Big Ten Championship. During his career at IU, Hursey was named a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar, a Big Ten Sportsmanship Honoree and to the academic all-Big Ten team.
Hursey’s first love was basketball. He’s a fan of the Indiana Hoosiers program and became quite familiar over the years with Michigan State University coach Tom Izzo and his son, Steven.
The Izzo connection started when Michigan State was recruiting Dwaun Anderson, a Suttons Bay graduate and the Mr. Basketball Award winner in 2011.
Hursey recalls all the hardest practices in basketball as he hoped to someday play at the college level. He had a tremendous work ethic on the court, and it helped his transition to golf.
Even though golf is the most difficult sport he’s taken on, Hursey mastered it more easily because of his desire to get better and not let anything get in the way of success.
“The chip on my shoulder – the grit I had – I think that helped me get to the next level in golf,” Hursey noted. “I really never felt I was as good as I was – I still don’t think I am.
“People tell me I’m good at golf, and I just don’t believe that because I just have this hunger to get better,” Hursey continued. “I am my biggest critic.”
Hursey quickly added he benefitted from two other critics – his sisters. He’s admitted he believes they possess more athleticism than he does.
“They always pushed me to get better, and they always pushed me to work harder,” he said. “They are kind of no-nonsense people.
“Growing up I never got more encouragement from them as much as I did critiquing,” he continued. “That was huge in terms of molding me.”
Hursey’s accomplishments are not at the top of the minds of his parents and former athletic director.
“I always say I am excited about the things he accomplished, but I am proud of the way he is as a person,” Todd Hursey said. “I am proud of how he is and how he handled himself.”
Retired Suttons Bay athletics director, Doug Periard agrees. He watched Hursey’s work ethic develop early and found him regularly at open gyms. Periard also singled out Hursey’s sportsmanship.
“I cannot think of a discouraging word the young man ever said to a teammate or opponent,” Periard said. “He was able to demonstrate both sportsmanship and leadership in defeat, and also in victory.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Suttons Bay's Thomas Hursey prepares to shoot a free throw during his senior season, and at right Hursey remains at home on the golf course. (Middle) Hursey grabs a quick snack during a round while golfing for Indiana. (Below) Hursey, recently, with his parents Nicki and Todd. (Recent photos by Tom Spencer; Indiana and Suttons Bay photos courtesy of the Hursey family.)