- The 6-foot-1 junior forward is the star of the record-setting women’s team that — under head coach Glenn Box — already has won a program-best 25 games this season and earlier this week claimed its first Mid-American Conference title in 22 years.
Tretter is the team’s leading scorer, its leading rebounder and surpassed 1,000 career points earlier this season.
- She’s a serious architecture student at Miami with a 3.975 grade point average and a prestigious internship awaiting her this summer with a Denver firm that is involved in the development and vision of the new multi-purpose arena the school hopes to build and open by the fall of 2028.
On campus she’s already been involved in various planning sessions for the RedHawks’ new hoops home.
- Just before the Miami Board of Trustees took its vote, she was one of two RedHawks student-athletes that athletics director David Sayler brought in to speak to the governing body about what athletic excellence can do for a school, the outlook of its students and the national recognition and perception that can come with it.
“I talked about how this is a great time — especially with the success rate both the men and women are having right now — to invest in the future of Miami athletics,” she said.
Going into Friday night’s regular season finale at Ohio University, the No. 19 men’s team was 30-0, the only unbeaten Division I team in the nation.
The women — 25-5 going into Saturday night’s final regular season game at OU — were just 9-20 two seasons ago.
Box said Tretter was the perfect player to address the board:
“She is a great ambassador not only for our program, but the school. She loves her architecture program, probably more than her basketball. She’s a great player, but she’s truly a student first.
“And yet we are not who we are as a basketball program without Amber Tretter.”
That last thought is neither overstatement nor easily-offered platitude.
It’s a truth that came from a rough start for both Box and Tretter three seasons ago.
Coming from Ferdinand, Indiana, a small town in the southern part of the state, Tretter was one of four high school seniors committed to the Miami program when popular RedHawks’ coach DeUnna Hendrix suddenly resigned in late April over what’s been reported as inappropriate texts with a student-athlete.
That departure was followed by a mass exodus of players.
Seven in all — including the team’s top five scorers and top five rebounders — left the team and two of the four recruits Tretter planned to come in with decided to go elsewhere, as well.
She decided to stay, in part because she liked the campus, the academic excellence and especially the architecture major the school offered.
Two weeks after the bombshell vacancy was announced, Sayler hired Box, who had been an assistant in the successful Indiana University program for seven seasons and spent the last five as the associate head coach.
That intrigued Tretter who had grown up a Hoosiers’ fan and had gone to several women’s games in Bloomington.
“I had committed here and wanted to honor that. I wanted to be part of a team that could build something great with this program,” she said, sounding like the basketball architect she truly is.
‘There were a lot of tears that first year’
Ferdinand, a small town of 2,188 according to the last census, is “about midway between Louisville and Evansville,” Tretter said.
Two of the main things it’s known for are the Monastery Immaculate Conception, which is home to the Sisters of St. Benedict and high school hoops.
The boys’ team at Forest Park High in Ferdinand won back-to-back state titles just over two decades ago and the girls — led by Tretter — won back-to-back Indiana crowns in 2022 and 2023.
Her hoop dreams were first honed on a small backyard court at home.
“My dad put in a concrete pad that went out to three-point range at the top of the key,” she said. “Me and my (younger) brother Aaron would go out there all the time and we’d 1-v-1. Most of the time I beat him, but when he got taller than me, it was a little tougher.”
Toughest though, was playing on that court once evening came.
“We never had a light out there,” she said with a small laugh. “If you wanted to keep playing, you had to bring a shop light out.
“I tried to convince my dad for years to get a light out there, but he never did. Today the court’s still there, but there’s still no light.”
Her hoops career in high school never got the bright lights treatment either.
The fact that she played for a smaller school and had spent her whole AAU career on a Southern Indiana AAU team rather than a more ballyhooed one in Indianapolis nearly a three-hour drive away — one that travelled to national tournaments and got exposure for its best players — kept her off some recruiting boards.
Box now admits he didn’t know of her in high school.
Tretter said she ended up getting two Division I scholarship offers, one from Bellarmine and the other from Miami, and that one only came after she lobbied the coaches.
When Box took over the reins at Miami, he was left with four players who had played minimal minutes the year before and the two recruits.
Besides Tretter there was incoming freshman Maddy Huhn, who then transferred after a season.
Tretter said she initially came to Miami thinking she wouldn’t play much and instead was quickly thrust into a leadership role, something she found overwhelming at times.
“There were a lot of tears that first year,” she said.
She dried her eyes and steeled her backbone with commitment and work.
Associate head coach Ben Wiezba notes how Tretter does everything she can to make herself better. She comes to practice early to put up extra shots, stays late to work on her game and comes in on her off days, all while shining in the classroom and taking part in other projects on campus.
In the process she sets an example for everyone else.
“She’s the type of student-athlete you dream of having,” he said.
After that initial 9-win season and the departure of five players that followed, Box retooled the team and the RedHawks went 19-12 last season — Miami’s first winning season in six years and made it to the second round of the WNIT.
Credit: Scott Kissell
Credit: Scott Kissell
Four more players — some fueled by NIL dreams elsewhere and facilitated by the transfer portal — left again after last season.
But a standard was set for the program and Tretter — who has now started 87 of her 90 college games and registered 29 double-double efforts — was the needed cornerstone that has added other prime returnees to the foundation, including Nuria Jurjo, a 5-foot-10 guard from Barcelona, Spain; 5-foot-4 point guard Tamar Singer from Israel; and 6-foot-3 Ilse de Vries from Netherlands.
‘Those struggles make this so much sweeter’
Box can’t say enough good things about Tretter.
And it’s not simply because she leads the team in scoring (14.6) and rebounding (8.1) and is second in blocked shots and field goal percentage. She ranks in the top nine of all those categories in the Mid-American Conference, as well.
“She’s an awesome recruiter for us in regards to selling our vision here,” Box said. “She embodies what our standards and expectations are. Because of who she is and what she does, other kids want to play with her.
“She leads by example and her voice. She’s grown into that role and has really taken ownership of the program.”
After Saturday’s 6.p.m. ESPNU-televised final in Athens, the RedHawks head to next week’s MAC Tournament in Cleveland, where they are the No. 1 seed.
With three wins, they would have the league’s automatic bid and make the NCAA Tournament for only the second time in program history.
The other invite came in 2008 when Coach Maria Fantanarosa’s 23-11 team was a No. 13 seed and lost to Louisville.
“Because of what we went through that first year, I appreciate this season all the more,” Tretter said. “Those struggles make this so much sweeter.
“We wanted to build something and we did.”
With that architectural ability she’s shown with both the women’s program and now the new arena, she should deal with one longstanding, unfinished project.
She needs to go back to Ferdinand and convince her dad to put lights on that concrete pad behind the house.
An illuminated player deserves an illuminated court.
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