Alabama basketball facing familiar foe in South Carolina big man Nick Pringle

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – For the second game in a row, Alabama will face a former Crimson Tide player. In its decisive, 107-79 win over Oklahoma, Alabama welcomed Mohamed Wague back to Coleman Coliseum. When the Tide travels to Columbia, South Carolina, on Wednesday, January 8, it will take on former Alabama forward Nick Pringle on his new home floor.

“He was great for us in the Final Four run, had a lot of really good games for us here over his two years,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said on Tuesday. “It’ll be good to see him. He’s playing well for them. He’s their second-leading scorer. Their frontcourt has been carrying this team, him and (Collin) Murray-Boyles have been really good for them.”

Pringle entered the transfer portal two weeks after Alabama’s Final Four loss to UConn. Two weeks after that, he committed to play his final year of college ball at South Carolina.

The 6-foot-10 forward from Seabrook, South Carolina, appeared in 68 games in his two years at Alabama and often provided an emotional boost for the Tide. He grew into one of the top leaders on the team last season while averaging 6.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. 

Some of Pringle’s best games came in the NCAA Tournament. In Year 1, he produced a career best 19 points and 15 rebounds in the opening round against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. In the Elite Eight matchup with Clemson, a team from his home state, Pringle had career-highs in free throws (8-13) and season-highs in rebounds (11), assists (3) and blocks (2).

In 14 games played so far this season, Pringle is averaging 10.4 points and 6.4 rebounds for the Gamecocks while shooting 66.7 percent from the floor. He has once again seen a minutes boost as he is averaging 24.5 minutes per contest and is playing in a different system.

“They obviously play different than us,” Oats said. “They play through the post more, so he gets more post touches, and he’s been pretty good with them. I see some stuff he did for us that he’s doing for them. He’s probably helping their offense a little bit. They play a lot slower than we do, so he’s getting less in transition. But when the opportunity is there, he’s still an unbelievable athlete that can get out and run. 

“So he’ll take advantage if we’re lazy in our transition D and he’ll get out. The biggest thing is he’s just getting a lot more post touches. He was playing more on the perimeter for us and kind of being a connector. Now, he’s actually getting fed and expected to score in the post. He’s doing a pretty good job. We’re gonna have to do a good job guarding him in there.”

Pringle spent two full seasons in the Alabama men’s basketball program, which could give him and his new team an advantage when they welcome the Crimson Tide to Colonial Life Arena on Wednesday night (6 p.m. CT on SEC Network). Oats expects South Carolina to know some of Alabama’s calls, but he also thinks his players’ familiarity with Pringle helps.

“Nick’s a smart player,” Oats said. “He’s gonna know our play calls. We’ve got some new stuff, but probably 80 percent of it is what we were doing last year. He’s gonna know what we’re doing on some play calls. I’m sure he’s gonna alert them to it. They’re gonna be a little more prepared than maybe some other teams would be.

“But we’ve got new personnel. We play so much in the flow anyways, we’re not calling a set unless there’s a dead ball typically. So it does present a few challenges. But I tell our team, ‘I don’t really care if the other team knows what we’re running. We have to run it correctly.’ 

“If they know what we’re doing, that’s great. We know how to attack every different type of coverage. So if they’re gonna cover one way, we’re gonna attack it and the guys gotta make the right reads. It’s a little bit different.”

Oats continued, “The other way of it is our guys know him. They should know how to guard him better than just guarding a random guy that they’ve never seen before. So we’ve got that advantage a little bit. Cliff (Omoruyi) wasn’t here last year, but some of our guys were – (Mo) Dioubate, in the frontcourt, was here. Jarin (Stevenson) was here. Grant (Nelson) was here. Whoever ends up being on him will have a little bit better idea of how to guard him, hopefully, than just playing some random guy.

“But again, we didn’t post him a ton last year, so we’re gonna have to guard him a lot more in the post here in this game than we probably did in practice last year.”

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