Nate Oats Announces Suspension for Forward Nick Pringle

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama basketball has suspended senior forward Nick Pringle, head coach Nate Oats announced at Friday's press conference.

"[Pringle] is suspended indefinitely right now for conduct detrimental to the team," Oats said. "Nothing serious, off the court or anything. Just in-house, a standard we want out guys to uphold and he wasn't upholding it. I still love Nick, hopefully he'll get himself figured out and be back with the team shortly."

Pringle has already had a bit of an up-and-down season for the Crimson Tide in just under a month of play.

As one of three returning players from a season ago, Pringle began the season in the starting lineup, but played under 15 minutes in the first two games of Alabama's season.

Oats issued a public challenge to Pringle to improve his defensive play, and level of play wholistically as well. Pringle saw an uptick in minutes over the next two games, where Oats was complimentary of him.

On Tuesday, Pringle was then benched in favor of Mohamed Wague in the starting lineup. Wague played well, but in limited minutes as he's still ramping up from an offseason foot injury that kept him out of practice until a week before the season began. 

"All of the guys off the bench are going to get a little bit better chance now [with Pringle suspended]," Oats said. "Everybody will have a chance to get some more minutes. We'll see how they do with the initial minutes they get to see how many more minutes they get throughout the game.

Alabama welcomes Arkansas State to Coleman Coliseum on Monday, who is led by former Alabama assistant coach Bryan Hodgson. The game tips off at 7 p.m. CT and will air on SEC Network.