It’s only natural that when Mike Brey visited Weissport on Saturday, that the subject of basketball would be brought up.

Mike Brey, Notre Dame’s head basketball coach who has catapulted the Irish to become a perennial force in the NCAA, came to Weissport on Saturday for the unveiling of a statue of his mother, Betty Mullen Brey.

Betty was a native of Weissport and went on to become a world champion swimmer. She swam for the silver-medal winning U.S. swim team in the preliminary heats of the 1956 Olympics, but was not eligible for a medal under Olympic rules. She was a member of a Good Will tour that traveled the world — introducing the butterfly stroke before the 1956 Olympics. Additionally, she attained gold and silver medals in the Pan American Games in Argentina.

Several people were overheard asking him if he was recruiting anyone locally. Of how his Fighting Irish were going to fare this coming season.

The congenial coach, who last visited Weissport 50 years ago, not only answered the questions for anyone who asked but gave them an autograph. After all, a coach who has taken his team to the NCAA playoffs seven times in the last eight years is a celebrity.

At one point, after the unveiling, Brey saw a very familiar face in the crowd. It was that of another former Lehighton resident, Mickey Miller. In his high school years, Miller was an accomplished basketball player and was one of the top scorers in the then Lehigh Valley Basketball League. The league included such teams as Emmaus, Whitehall and Northampton.

Mickey was with his brothers, Ron and Jeff Miller, who also were excellent players at Lehighton. Jeff is presently the head basketball coach at Northern Lehigh.

“I have to go say hi to him,” Brey said when he saw Mickey.

Mickey presently lived in New Jersey. His son played basketball for Brey.

The two men hugged and talked shop for about 20 minutes.

Regarding his potential for local recruiting, Miller said he has no prospects at the present time.

“I have nothing in this area right now,” he said, although he did talk to a young girl and referred to her as a “future member of the Irish.”

He said of recruiting, “We’ve been in Philly a lot and Jersey a lot. That’s been a good area for us so we continue looking there.”

“I got a kid, actually, that’s committed; a young man from Pittsburgh in this year’s class,” he said.

He added, “Back in this corridor – Pennsylvania, Jersey, Maryland New York – that’s good Notre Dame country.”

Of this year’s prospects in college, Brey said, “We got Bonzie Colson, the national player of the year. We got Rex Pflueger, the good point guard. We got some other seniors. So we have veterans back that have won before.”

He said, “I like our group as we head into the grueling ACC (Atlantic Athletic Conference).”

On the outlook for the league, he said, “We got Duke and North Carolina who will be up there again. Miami’s very good. Louisville is very good. One thing about this league is it has great depth.”

“We’ve had good momentum since rejoining the ACC (Atlantic Athletic Conference),” he said. “The league has been good to us and we’ve been good to it. That’s helped us generate some credibility; some recruiting.”

He said the ACC tournament this year will be in Brooklyn. “It’s nice to be in the Northeast and let some of our ND fans here get to it.”