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Nothing about Nick Pringle’s experience in basketball was easy, but the Crimson Tide forward has learned from his past to make the most of his opportunities.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — At first glance, Nick Pringle is the prototypical Power 5 basketball player: tall, muscular build, and athletically gifted.
The image of the Seabrook, S.C., product is a simple one, but the path that led him to the University of Alabama and one of the best teams in the nation was a challenging one. The Pringle that fans see today didn’t always jump out of the gym or stand at 6-foot-9. As a matter of fact, basketball wasn’t even Pringle’s first sport.
“To be real, I fell in love with football first,” Pringle said. “Just being 5 foot 6, 5 foot 8, in middle school with my guys, I started picking up on football. I had good hands and good feet.”
Pringle didn’t play organized basketball until his eighth grade year, after being cut his seventh grade year. During his first year, however, Pringle saw that he had some talent, from being able to shoot to finishing at the rim.
He used this realization to continue building his skillset when he reached Whale Branch High School, where Pringle was barely six feet tall as a freshman.
By the end of high school, Pringle had a major growth spurt, standing at about 6 feet, 8 inches as a senior.
“I knew the height was coming. My mom is 5 feet, 10 inches and my dad is 6 feet, eight inches,” Pringle said. “It was going to come eventually, but the transition was good. It was a blessing.”
Pringle said that even at his new height, he was still involved in a lot of perimeter play, from handling the ball to coming off screens to facilitating. But he was still lacking a trait that many know him for now: playing above the rim.
“I didn’t even have great athleticism until my senior year. I only had two dunks my junior year,” Pringle said. “To see me now and reflect on those times, it’s crazy to see my growth. It just makes me happy.”
Part of the reason Pringle was a late bloomer was the fact that he didn’t begin strength training until his junior year. That, along with studying the game itself, was something Pringle wished he started earlier so he would be farther along now. Beyond that, there was another component of basketball that Pringle picked up late: AAU.
Playing for a good AAU program is just as important, and maybe more, as playing for the high school team, but Pringle didn’t get involved until after his junior year and into his senior year. The program he joined was TMP, a Charleston-based program that produced NBA Champion Khris Middleton and University of Tennessee guard Josiah-Jordan James.
We would drive an hour both ways every day between going to practice and back home,” Pringle said. “It was a grind, I had to go get it. I just tried to do anything to grab some offers.”
In addition to playing for TMP, Pringle still played for his local AAU team to help bring notoriety and success, but it was his play with the larger program that resulted in six offers.
One of those came from Jake Williams, who was the head coach at the University of South Carolina at Salkehatchie, a junior college about two hours away from Seabrook.
Williams was familiar with Pringle for two reasons. First, Pringle played similar to Ahmad Rand, who played for Williams and was about to move on to a four-year school, leaving Williams to find that same type of player to replicate the success Rand brought to the team.
Second, Williams had a player who was also from Seabrook that grew up with Pringle.
“I kind of knew who Nick was as a junior in high school,” Williams said. “And as a junior, he wasn’t anywhere near 6 foot 10, and he was like a baby deer: long, wiry 6 foot 5, trying to grow into his body. But you saw the frame and length and you knew he was gonna sprout. And his senior year he was about 6 foot 8, and was really athletic, shooting 3-pointers, getting blocks and doing all the stuff that Ahmad was doing.”
