Pringle’s winding path leads from Seabrook to Final Four
By Justin Jarrett
LowcoSports.com
The first time I became painfully aware of Nick Pringle was when I released the 2018-19 All-Lowco Basketball Team and relegated a burgeoning star to the honorable mention list.
To be fair, Pringle was the No. 3 scorer on that Whale Branch team, and although he flirted with averaging a double-double (9.4 ppg, 8.6 rpg), all 10 players picked ahead of him had the numbers to warrant their inclusion. Even after reviewing the stats from every angle, I felt good about the decision. There was no one to bump off the list.
Of course, hindsight reveals the stark difference between a player’s present and their potential. Those who lobbied vociferously for Pringle’s place on the first or second team had seen the potential, up close and personal, night in and night out. On paper, he was an honorable mention player as a junior, but he was still a project in the early stages of development.
To Pringle’s credit, he was never among those putting up a fight about his place on the list. He invited me to watch in person more during his senior season, then the Warriors compelled me to do so by putting together a season for the ages, going 21-7 and falling to powerhouse Gray Collegiate Academy in the Class 2A state championship game. Pringle was a dominant force throughout the season, averaging 15.2 points and 10.9 rebounds while sharing the spotlight with frontcourt mate Shaun Chisolm.
A year after being snubbed from the second team, Pringle was our obvious LowcoSports Player of the Year, and he was headed to Wofford to continue his career and keep chasing his dream.
His one season at Wofford was a struggle. After seeing significant time in the first two games of the season, including a double-double in 24 minutes against Carver, his playing time fell off a cliff and it was clear he needed a change of scenery.
The change was stark. Pringle left Wofford for Dodge City Community College, a world away from home in a place best known for Wild West shootouts and a distinct cowtown odor while passing through en route to the Rockies.
There was nothing to do but grind, and Pringle put in the work, propelling himself to the top of the JUCO recruiting rankings with a steady stream of highlight-reel putbacks and thunderous dunks. Many of the doors that had been closed to a late bloomer from a tiny school in an impoverished corner of the Lowcountry were open for a physical specimen sharpened by grown men in the junior college ranks. He opted to join Nate Oats at Alabama.
Pringle had bet on himself and won. Big.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows during Pringle’s tenure in Tuscaloosa. His playing time was spotty in his first season with the Crimson Tide, which was marred by an off-court incident in which two teammates were connected to a fatal shooting, but the potential that was apparent to those who watched him dominate in high school continued to pop through when Pringle got his chance, and he had a career game in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, racking up 19 points and 15 rebounds against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
But after starting the first six games this season, Pringle found himself in Oats’ doghouse at various times throughout the campaign, even earning two separate suspensions for the dreaded “conduct detrimental to the team.”
“He’s currently suspended,” Oats said after announcing the second sit-down in January. “He’s got to decide whether he wants to be a part of this program or not with some of his decisions and how he conducts himself. Nothing bad off the court or anything like that, just in practice, in games, and we’ll see where it goes. We’ll meet when I get back.”
Pringle got his head straight and rejoined the team after two games away, and he has been impactful, scoring in double figures in nine of 13 games since, including three double-doubles. The most recent, a 16-point, 11-rebound effort while taking on the challenging defensive assignment of handling Clemson star PJ Hall, was indicative of the potential that has blossomed into Pringle’s present self.
Watching him dominate on the big stage Saturday night, it might have seemed as if Nick Pringle was always destined for basketball greatness, and anything less would have been a disappointment, but Pringle’s story is so much more layered than that, and his path has been a precarious one.
The stunning tattoo that takes up the considerable real estate that is Pringle’s muscular upper-right arm bears the likeness of his late brother, Trey, who died after being tasered multiple times by Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office deputies and placed in a chokehold by a firefighter following a call for a mental health episode in 2018.
Before he was even out of high school, Nick Pringle started a free basketball camp for area youth and named it “Treys for Trey,” and just a few months after leading Whale Branch to the state title game, Pringle was participating and leading Black Lives Matter protests to honor his brother, who undoubtedly would have been cheering louder than anyone when the Crimson Tide punched their ticket to the Final Four for the first time and his little brother earned the coveted hardhat from Oats in the postgame celebration.
Or, maybe, without the fuel of his grief and the memory of his big brother, maybe, Pringle would have given up before he got to this point. Everything that has happened up to now has led to Pringle’s big opportunity this weekend in Phoenix, and anyone who has followed his path to the Final Four knows better than to bet against him.
Justin Jarrett is the sports editor of The Island News and the founder of LowcoSports.com. He was the sports editor of the Island Packet and the Beaufort Gazette for 6½ years. He has a passion for sports and community journalism and a questionable sense of humor.
