LSU’s 10-3 victory over Ole Miss last fall was one of the most emotional wins of Les Miles’ tenure. Not only was it a thrilling win over a division rival then unbeaten and ranked third in the country, but it came less than 24 hours after Miles’ mother, Martha, passed away.

Miles let his team know of his loss the night before the Ole Miss game and coached with a heavy heart the next day. Notre Dame basketball coach Mike Brey now shares Miles’ pain, as the coach lost his mother last week during the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament. Brey found out about his mother’s death just hours before Notre Dame’s round of 32 matchup with Butler.

Tiger Sports Digest’s Ben Love was in Pittsburgh, Pa. last week, where both LSU and Notre Dame played their opening weekend games, and was sitting nearby when Brey announced in his post-game press conference that he’d lost his mother. Love drew the parallels between Miles and Brey and posted a beautifully written story on the two coaches and their shared pain. We highly recommend you give it a read here.

Love talked to Miles about Brey’s situation, and the LSU coach talked about his feelings toward Brey and the decision to coach through grief. Here’s an excerpt of what Miles had to say:

“So for me, I think (Brey) made a great call for his team and I suspect his family. The decision about it all had to be uniform. All the different groups of people in his life that he was going to come across, it had to be the same.

“The great thing about this is it’s a very personal decision for the team. In other words, ‘Do I think this team can handle this?’ Yeah, yeah, I did. And I felt like they needed to know, period. But I’m for Mike Brey. I think his decision is a great decision. He knew his team best, obviously.”

Their approaches were different – Miles admits “I’m a little more transparent maybe than a lot of people” – although their plight was the same.

And, through forces in the world hard to saddle with words, both made it through the other side of emotional days all the better for having participated.

“I think it absolutely helped me deal with it, without question,” Miles acknowledges.

Head over to Love’s story to see all of what Miles had to say about that difficult stretch and how he got through it.