At first, Sam Fleming kept a poker face. On Jan. 26, 2025, he sat in a doctor's office after receiving confirmation of a brutal diagnosis, a torn Achilles tendon. The news hadn’t hit him yet. It hadn’t fully processed.
About three minutes passed. Then the emotions overcame him as he sat inside the doctor’s office. He didn’t touch his phone and let him feel everything he needed to.
“I just sat there and cried for the next two or three hours,” Fleming said.
Just three months earlier, Fleming was on an unofficial visit to Michigan State and roaming the sidelines of a football game with legendary coach Tom Izzo. The 6-foot-8 forward from Springfield, Mass., believed he was the best player in his class in New England. The injury significantly derailed his journey, but he may have become stronger for it.
Fleming ultimately returned to a high-major level, committing to TCU in June. The 18 months leading to that moment required hard work, patience, valuable personal growth and of course, a great deal of perseverance. As he sat in that doctor’s office on the day of his diagnosis, a text from his coach, Mike Mannix, stuck with him. He trusted the process and was rewarded.
“He sent me a long message and said, ‘Any coaches who really believed in you and really liked your game from the jump will still stick with you for the hard times you’re about to go through,” Fleming said.
Adversity strikes
Fleming had the basketball world at his fingertips in late 2024. A point forward with great size, athleticism and a polished game, he was getting plenty of high-major attention. He had offers from West Virginia and Xavier. He took an unofficial visit to Boston College in addition to Michigan State.
The injury put it all on hold.
On Jan. 25, 2025, Wilbraham played its second game after Christmas break against New York Military Academy. Fleming went up for a block, came down, and then went back up for a second jump on an ensuing contest. He said he remembers feeling like someone kicked him in the heel. He instantly fell to the ground.
“It felt like a bee stung you,” Fleming said.
The adrenaline wore off and Fleming hobbled off the court, but he thought it was a minor ankle injury that would only keep him out for a few weeks. It turned out to be much worse.
“It was the most significant injury I’ve ever coached,” Mannix said. "We’ve lost guys for the season before but for lesser things. It was a lot.”
They were devastated. The following weeks were dark for Fleming, who couldn’t do much besides sitting in his bed with a full leg cast on. But he eventually rejoined the team as a de facto assistant coach, which was therapeutic for him as much as anything. But it also helped him in his growth.
Fleming described himself as something of a skill development coach. He helped his teammates with their footwork and helped them through drills and techniques. He worked closely with teammates and two of his best friends in Chinedu Okpara and Christian Martin. It helped him become a better verbal leader and communicator. When the winter transitioned into the AAU season, he stayed engaged with his BABC teammates and lifelong friends Amir Jenkins and Alex Egbuonu.
“That’s when I wanted to become a head coach when I’m done with basketball,” Fleming said. “I have a knack for knowing how to get it across in different ways, learning how to adjust to the different ways to get your point across.”
When Fleming went down during the season, there was some worry that the season might get away from them. He was viewed as a leader and Wilbraham’s best player. The Titans had about a .500 record at the time of Fleming’s injury, and a series of other injuries left Mannix’s group severely shorthanded down the stretch of the season. But Wilbraham stayed together and made an inspirational run to the NEPSAC Class AA playoffs.
Mannix said that it was one of the best examples of chemistry and character he’s seen in a team. Fleming played a big role in that. It would have been understandable if he had gone into a hole given his circumstances. But he stayed engaged. The team’s success helped lift his spirits, and he stayed committed to the classroom, and positive results there helped him, too.
“He’d be on the baseline in practice, doing whatever he could to help,” Mannix said. “He never had any moments where he slipped at all. He stayed serious about his schoolwork and he remained a really good teammate and a really good person to be around. College coaches would even comment, it’s really great that he remains so positive. (They would say), ‘when we talk to him, he stays positive. He keeps on saying he’s supporting his team and he’s trying to work hard on his rehab,’ and that’s where character matters because some guys can turn into jerks. …
“It circles back to the point — if that doesn’t show you a lot of someone’s character, I don’t know what does.”
Ahead of schedule
Fleming attacked his rehab with serious purpose.
His AAU coach, Leo Papile, helped connect him with two physical therapists in Boston, and he would go there twice a week in addition to seeing a few PTs locally. Fleming was determined to get ahead of schedule with his rehab. He wasn’t supposed to be running in May or June, but he was ready to start sprinting by the June scholastic period. He started jumping before the July live periods, and he was playing 5-on-5 by August.
Mannix was admittedly nervous about how quickly Fleming was progressing.
“He was really ambitious,” he said. “There were a couple of times where I was like, ‘You sure you don’t want to slow down a little bit?’ As a coach, the last thing you want to see is re-injury. You don’t want to see that. A couple times I joked and it wasn’t always 100 percent a joke, (saying), ‘We’re moving a little fast here.’
“I’m putting him through a workout seven months after the injury and I don’t know … he was ready. I will say the first open gym we had in the fall that he participated in, I might as well have been wearing a blind fold. I couldn’t watch. That’s when you really feel like a dad, I just don’t want him to get hurt.”
Fleming was fully cleared eight months after the injury, and he was motivated and eager to remind people how good he is.
“The hardest part was that I felt like everyone kind of forgot about me in a way, which was a hard thing to swallow because at one point in time, in 2024, in my opinion I thought I was the best player around this whole area,” Fleming said. “There was nothing anyone could do to kind of stop my game. I felt like I was at the peak of everything. The injury made me feel like I want to get (back) to that point. I set a goal for myself that if I can get back to what I felt like in 2024, I feel like that’s when I’ll feel OK with myself.”
Fleming admitted that he possibly tried too much to make that happen. As he shook off the rust, he said he was thinking too far ahead about his goal and it got in the way of maintaining team success within individual success. But he eventually figured it out.
“I feel like once I got rid of that individual ego around the fourth or fifth game, I clicked and snapped into it,” Fleming said. “I adjusted to just knowing it’s going to come to me sooner or later and I’ll let the game come to me. … I just let it come to me slowly and trusted the process.”
Fleming put his head down and continued to work. He focused on playing hard, rebounding and doing the things he knows he’s best at – and trusting that coaches would take a chance. He felt like he hit his groove again during a dramatic win over Mount St. Charles at the Hoophall Prep Showcase in January, when he scored 24 points in the second half and made a go-ahead shot in the final minute.
“I felt like that was my game where I was like, there’s no way a coach won’t come look at me after these couple games I just had,” Fleming said.
'I felt at home'
The high-major interest started coming again. In February, he was offered by Will Wade and NC State – an opportunity he was excited about until Wade suddenly resigned to go back to LSU in late March, which left Fleming without a home into the spring. But it started to come back together with an offer from TCU in April.
Fleming remembers getting a phone call from an unknown number in Fort Worth, Texas, and he initially thought it could have been his cousin because he has family down there. But it was TCU coach Jamie Dixon on the phone. From there, he felt a genuine connection with the coaching staff, which included constant communication with assistant Duane Broussard. The portal had settled down, and TCU was looking for another wing/forward to add to its roster. It became a perfect fit.
“It felt like a recruitment process. I felt at home with them,” Fleming said. “I felt like it was more of a family-oriented process of being recruited. It didn’t feel like it was forced. It felt like all real. Any time they called it was all laughs. I think we talked about basketball two or three times. I thought that was the best option for me.”
While Fleming had a productive senior season at Wilbraham, his best is almost certainly ahead of him. His doctors told him he might not be himself physically and athletically until 16 months after the injury, and that came in May. Mannix saw him after the season and said there were noticeable improvements in his quickness and burst, and things were starting to get back to him physically.
Fleming said he’s now in the best shape he’s been in since 2024. He’s excited for the opportunity to continue proving himself at TCU, where he wants to be more of a force in transition for a team that thrives in the open floor. He’ll also have a chance to contribute as a point forward. But maybe most importantly, he’s full of gratitude for his journey.
“This has told me that nothing is ever set in stone, and God gives his toughest battles for his toughest soldiers,” Fleming said. “I just kept faith in myself and just made sure that even through those dark days when rehab was hard and hurt all the time, that in a couple months I’m going to be back to myself and everyone’s going to be talking about me again and I’ll be at peace with everything I’ve been through in the last year and a half. God willing, it happened. …
“It made me mentally tougher. I think I was already mentally tough in terms of taking hard yelling from a coach, but in terms of going through adversity, this really made me mentally tough. If I can come back from a torn Achilles, I can come back from anything.”
