GLENDALE, Ariz. — It’s fitting Nick Pringle had to step out of a walking boot before dropping 16 points and 12 rebounds against Clemson in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Nothing on the senior forward’s journey to college basketball’s biggest stage has come easy.
Pringle hasn’t just battled back from a left heel injury. He’s overcome personal adversity to become the impactful player he's been in the NCAA Tournament. Before he was a key rotation piece on a Final Four team set to face top-seeded UConn on Saturday, Pringle had to grind just to get to Alabama in the first place. He's learned a lot over the years after being an underrecruited player out of high school who ended up at Wofford and played just 15 games in his freshman season.
“I didn't have the best work ethic [at Wofford],” Pringle said. “I wasn't the best academically there. It was a tough liberal arts school so I struggled a bit there. So I went there, it didn't work out well. But once I [saw] that door close over there I just knew I just had to put my head down and lock into what I ultimately had to achieve.”
To ultimately get to where he wanted to be, Pringle chose to drop to the junior college level. It wasn’t an easy decision. He felt he let his city and family down by not being able to make it work at a school in his native South Carolina. With his back against the wall, however, Pringle didn’t waiver. He went to Dodge City Community College and found his footing, recording seven double-doubles and 14 double-digit rebounding games in his lone season. He became the No. 5 ranked JUCO player in the Class of 2022.
That’s when Alabama and a return to the top level came calling. It started at a jamboree in Dallas where coach Nate Oats and former UA assistant Bryan Hodgson saw what a hard-working forward could bring on the glass and how hard he worked on the defensive end.
“The whole jamboree I probably scored like six to eight points,” Pringle said with a laugh. “But it was just the hustle, the rebounding, the [defense]. Me switching on guards and guarding guards and just having the mentality, being a vocal leader, things like that. The little, small characteristics that I think they saw in me and they really loved that out of me.”
Alabama got the vocal leader it saw wearing a Garden City uniform in a gym in Dallas. But it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing since he ground out of JUCO. Pringle’s second season in Tuscaloosa looked like it was coming off the rails. He was suspended twice by the team. He traveled on his own to Spokane, Washington to join the team before its first NCAA Tournament game.
But instead of letting those suspensions spiral, or letting his late arrival to Spokane get in the way of what Alabama wanted to achieve, Pringle again buckled down. He leaned on the circle of people who were closest to him to keep him on the right path.
That circle includes his mom, who always gave him the line ‘this too shall pass.’ On the road, he relies on Alabama Team Chaplain, Scotty Hollins, who keeps Pringle grounded. While Pringle recovered from his heel injury, Alabama’s trainer Clarke Holter was also available if he needed to talk.
Pringle was always on the right path, he just needed to figure out how to give his teammates the best version of himself.
“One of the statements he made to me when he'd come back [after] he got suspended… six or eight weeks ago [was] ‘I didn't realize what a distraction I was to my teammates,’” Oats said. “His big thing is he's always wanted to be there for his teammates, and he has been. He's been a good teammate. He didn't realize some of the stuff he was doing was a distraction. He didn't want to be that.”
Pringle’s personality is palpable. He enthusiastically told a reporter in the locker room Friday that the two would become friends if he got to know Pringle long enough. The forward majors in communications because he wanted to learn how to use his personality to connect with others. It took him some time to harness his leadership and vocality. But when he did, those traits became assets for Alabama basketball to reach this point.
“I think these last few weeks, six to eight weeks, he's made big changes and he's leading us the right way,” Oats said. “He's got this great, infectious personality about him that when you get him leading the right way, he can really be a great leader. I think that's part of why we made this big run here in the NCAA Tournament.”
Pringle went through personal ups and downs to become the vocal leader Alabama needed him to be and played through the pain in his foot to help the Tide make history. Facing UConn feels relatively light compared to after summarizing all that it took to get here, and Pringle isn’t ready to let that season end at the hands of the Huskies.
