By Doug Ireland, NSUDemons.com
 
NATCHITOCHES -- As Tynes Hildebrand watched his former player, Mike Brey, coaching the Notre Dame basketball team last Saturday night in an intense NCAA Tournament battle with Butler, he knew something was amiss.
 
"I said to (wife) Julia, 'Mike looks beat, tired, exhausted,' and that's not his style at all," said Hildebrand, the 2014 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductee who was Brey's coach when he played point guard for Northwestern State from 1977-80.
 
"Then after the game in the press conference, he made that announcement about his mother, and it made sense," said Hildebrand.
 
Brey's mother, Betty, 84, passed away last Saturday morning of a heart attack at the family's retirement home in Florida. She was a 1956 Olympic Games competitor for the United States, a world record-setting swimmer, and later coached swimming at George Washington University. His father, Paul, was a high school athletic director.
 
"An unbelievable woman, a woman ahead of her time, and probably the real driving force behind everything I've done," said Brey as he broke the news in the postgame press conference.
 
"I grew up with two of the best educators ever," he said. "Every kid that they touched, whether the swimming pool they ran in the summer or as high school educators, loved them. I learned a lot right there, that their pupils loved them. I tried to emulate my mom and dad as far as how I interact with people."
 
Along with his parents, Brey says he had three primary mentors: his high school coach, legendary DeMatha (Md.) High coach Morgan Wooten; Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, whom he coached under for eight years; and Hildebrand, now finally retired after being one of the NCAA's top evaluators of college basketball officials, along with 15 seasons (1965-80) as the Demons' coach and 13 years (1983-96) as NSU's director of athletics.
 
Over the past decade, Hildebrand, and often his wife, traveled each basketball season through the south, Midwest and southwest as he watched dozens of games annually rating officials, helping select those who worked NCAA Tournament games. Then throughout the tournament, Hildebrand would join his peers at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis and watch telecasts to advance deserving officials to subsequent round games.
 
The 2014-15 season has been pretty travel-free for the devoted couple, and they've enjoyed the opportunity to attend more NSU games and to watch Brey's surprising Fighting Irish play on TV.
 
"We've watched most of his games and they're just enjoyable to watch. A lot of nights they play extremely well," said Hildebrand, who has not been surprised as Brey has emerged as one of the game's top coaches during his 15 seasons at Notre Dame.
 
"I say that because of his background. My opinion, I think Mike Krzyzewski is probably the best coach in America. He's a great coach. Mike learned under the best, doing the work at Duke. He would talk about all they would do in preparation. Sometimes along the way in the tournament, or at the Final Four, I would see them and Mike would say, 'Coach, we really need to sit down and catch up, but we've got so much work to do, I can't visit right now.'  Winning doesn't happen by accident.
 
"The guy at DeMatha has to be one of the all-time top high school coaches in America, and he not only played for Coach Wooten, he later came back and coached under him," said Hildebrand. "You put his own experience in the mix, he's got a great foundation to draw from."
 
Brey's parents were another obvious influence, said Hildebrand.
 
"When we were recruiting Mike, one of the first things he told me about her was her being an Olympic swimmer, and his dad was a coach, and it was a sports family," he said. "It's evident they know how to compete and they know how to do it the right way, and it filtered down to their children. Mike doesn't scream and holler very often at a game.
 
"The officials, when they find out I coached Mike, have always told me they enjoy working his games because he coaches and goes about his business and lets them work. Even when they were down Saturday night, he was very positive with his team and it paid off at the end."
 
The Hildebrands and Brey's former assistant coach at NSU, Derwood Duke, along with many other Natchitoches residents who knew Brey during his college days, will doubtless be joined by former NSU teammates and classmates around the country watching Thursday evening's Sweet 16 round battle with Wichita State. The winner likely meets unbeaten Kentucky in the Elite Eight.
 
"Mike's got a tough draw but he's got a tough team," said Hildebrand. "I don't know if anybody can beat Kentucky, but if he catches them on a tough shooting night, Mike's got a great shooting team himself, and if they are hot, you never know. They'll make all the right moves, that's for sure."
 
For insight on Betty Mullen Brey:
 
http://www.mcall.com/sports/mc-mike-brey-mother-betty-mullen-lehighton-20150324-story.html#page=1