TAMPA, Fla. – On a Saturday morning in late-October, Ben Fletcher received a call from multiple members of the USF men’s basketball team. The message was clear: they needed to be together, they needed to practice and they needed to get at it right away.
Given it was only three days since the news of the passing of his good friend, Amir Abdur-Rahim, Fletcher was not sure how his team could have anything resembling an effective practice. Alas, he got in his car and drove to the Muma Center.
“I walked in not knowing what to expect,” he said, knowing how everyone was grieving. “I am thinking it is going to be a rough one and just try to get through it.”
It did not take long, though, for Fletcher to sense something very comforting and very rewarding.
“It felt like Amir was standing there,” he said. “The team was that locked in. We went at it for an hour and a half. It was everything that you want out of a practice. You could tell Amir had his hand on the team that day.”
Family Values Steered Fletcher
A four-acre lot with a push mower and weed eater? No problem. Willie Fletcher would get it done. Not that there was much of chance he would not complete the task, multiple back surgeries be damned.
“That didn’t stop my father,” said Ben, the youngest of five born to Mattie and Willie. “He ran his own lawncare business and I would help him on the weekends. It taught me so much about hard work, perseverance and what it was to be a man.”
Fletcher was born and raised in Selma, Alabama, and played multiple sports at Southside High. He was a heck of a quarterback, a county track and field champ and played baseball. Away from the field of play, he followed in the footsteps of his three older brothers by spending two years in an ROTC program while at Southside. Regardless of what he did, he always had the support of those who mattered most.
“I was so fortunate to have a loving mom and dad at home teaching me the basic tools for life,” he said. “They are heavy into the church, which played a big part in my life. They were hands-on parents who were there every step of the way, good and bad.”
The ROTC experience added a priceless layer of personal growth that, like the examples set by his parents, continue to guide Fletcher each day.
“I knew I did not want to go into the military, but hearing different aspects about the program from my brothers piqued my interest,” he said. “It was a great experience with the way things are done. I wish it was a requirement for most kids today because of the discipline it teaches as well as (providing) a different mindset than what most kids have nowadays.”
Fletcher, of course, was also big into hoops.
“Humble Kid” Could Play
Travel along Fletcher’s basketball timeline and it is clear Anthony Sewell had quite presence, and influence. After all, Sewell, currently an academic advisor Miles (Alabama) College, opened Fletcher’s eyes to the potential of playing collegiately and the priceless education that would come with it.
“I was a humble kid, and I knew I was pretty good, but I didn’t know I could play college basketball,” he said. “You see the guys playing on TV, and I am like, ‘Oh man. They are really good.’”
So was Fletcher, who played for Sewell at Southside. He received a scholarship to play at what was two-year Atlanta Metropolitan College, now a four-year institution known as Atlanta Metropolitan State College. He played his freshman season at the school before moving back to Alabama to help Mattie at a time when Willie was undergoing one of his back procedures.
Fletcher had a strong sophomore campaign at Alabama Enterprise Community College, roughly 125 miles from Selma. He was firmly on the radar of several coaches throughout the country, though he opted to remain close to home and play for Don Maestri and reunite with Sewell at Troy University. Maestri spent 31 years running the program and won 501 games before retiring following the 2012-13 season. Sewell, who graduated from Troy, was an assistant.
“I can’t say enough about him and what he has meant to me,” Fletcher said of Maestri. “I take everything from him, his way of viewing the game and his approach to it. He prepared for every (team) the same way and did not change whether we were up by 20 or down by 20. I am indebted to him because he got my career started.”
The 6-foot-3 guard averaged a team-high 13.9 points in helping lead the Trojans to the NCAA tourney in the spring of 2003. Following his two seasons as a player, Fletcher spent the next two years as a grad assistant before becoming a full-time assistant. He remained in that role under Phil Cunningham, who took over for Maestri and led the Trojans to the NCAA tournament in 2016-17. That gave Fletcher the distinction of being a player and an assistant coach on Troy’s only tourney teams.
“Those are the guys I learned from,” he said of Sewell, Maestri and Cunningham. “Very humble guys who didn’t make it about themselves. They made it about the players. That is the approach I take because it is not about me.”
Amir
The connectivity between Fletcher and Abdur-Rahim runs deep, to say the least. They played against each other in college – Abdur-Rahim attended Southeast Louisiana – and developed a friendship that grew with the help of mutual contacts in the sport.
Maestri came out retirement in 2016 to be a special assistant at Texas A&M to Billy Kennedy, who he coached at a high school in Louisiana. Kennedy was Abdur-Rahim’s coach at Southeast Louisiana and hired the latter to be an Aggies’ assistant. Hence, Kennedy, Abdur-Rahim and Maestri were working together in College Station.
Fletcher found himself “in limbo” when Cunningham was let go following the 2018-19 season at Troy. However, Abdur-Rahim, who spent that season as an assistant under Tom Crean at Georgia, in his home state, was in the running to be the head coach at Kennesaw State.
“He told me that he was pretty sure he was going to hire me,” recalled Fletcher. “He told me to stay patient and to let him get all of the paperwork and stuff done.”
Fletcher spent the next four seasons helping Abdur-Rahim turn the Owls into a program that was near the basement of Division I into one that made it to the NCAA tournament in 2022-23. Following that storybook season, Abdur-Rahim was hired at USF and Fletcher joined him in Tampa. The Bulls proceeded to set several program records on their way to winning the American Conference regular season title.
After Amir’s passing, USF athletic director Michael Kelly named Fletcher the interim head coach, something the latter did not take lightly.
“I knew how hard Amir worked to get to this point, and I felt so bad about trying to take it over, so to say,” said Fletcher, who Abdur-Rahim elevated to associate head coach in June. “I know in my heart Amir would have wanted me to do this. The hardest part is that I am still grieving.”
The grieving will continue. What has made things go as smooth as possible is the maturity displayed by a team of young men who wanted to be together mere days following the passing of their beloved coach.
There is one thing Fletcher wants Bulls fans and everyone else to do continue to do: “I hope that people are still sending up their prayers for Ari and the kids,” he said of Abdur-Rahim’s widow, Arianne, and three young children.
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