Exuberance overcomes Nick Pringle as he grips the wood frame of the SEC Championship trophy and lifts it joyfully while waiting for the confetti to fall and his turn on that magical ladder. If there was an award to be handed out to the most energized Arkansas player, Pringle would be a shoe-in to receive it.
Pringle envisioned this the night prior and changed his demeanor to one of persistence anytime the possibility of this coming to fruition emerged. The Arkansas forward won one of these at Alabama earlier in his college career and never forgot the feeling. When Arkansas coach John Calipari tried to calm the nerves pregame by labeling this as just another game, Pringle stood up to him and declared that to be “bulls***.”
The Arkansas forward gave up a prominent role and the comfortability of playing at home with South Carolina just for moments like this. And here he was soaking it all in.
Knowing Pringle, though, is knowing that the best part of all this for him is that his right arm is in all the images of him celebrating his second SEC Championship.
Inscribed at the top of the tattoo-filled sleeve that covers his shooting arm is a tattoo that Pringle wishes everyone in the building could see and know the meaning of. The tattoo is of Trey Ta’Quan Pringle Sr.—otherwise known as Nick’s late older brother.
Pringle has a blanket with a picture of Trey depicted as an Angel pinned on the wall in his apartment. If that doesn’t spark Pringle’s memory, he can look to a few undershirts that memorize his brother—which he keeps in the Arkansas locker room.
There’s no greater testament to Pringle’s commitment to remembering and honoring his brother than the tattoo engraved on his bicep, though. Below it, the Bible verse Jeremiah 29:11 is inscribed while Pringle’s mother and grandmother are sketched out parallel to it on his left arm. Trey is perhaps the most prominently displayed piece of Pringle’s ink, though.
The image depicts Trey just how Pringle wants to remember him—with a grin on his face and a halo surrounding his forehead. Now, everyone else also gets to see him that way.
“I try to make him look good,” Pringle told Basket Under Review. “I just wanted to have something to look at and remember him at all times and show people what I do it for.”
Pringle also has a tattoo of a wolf to commemorate a group called Wolfpack Seabrook, which Pringle and his brother were both a part of at home. That tattoo is complemented by another that says NLMB—which Pringle says stands for “never leave my brothers.”
If there’s anything that Pringle hasn’t done throughout his college basketball career—which has taken him from community college to a Final Four and on a final ride at Arkansas—he hasn’t left his brother. Pringle was 17 when Trey passed at age 24–which is how old Nick is now—but Pringle hasn’t wavered from his mission of making sure his brother’s memory is alive.
“I know the type of person he is, so I’m just trying to carry that legacy,” Pringle said. “I just try to do everything I can for him.”
For three days, Pringle and his family sat in a relentless agony. The days at Beaufort Memorial Hospital were painstaking—and as it would turn out, they represented the last time that Pringle would see his brother alive.
Three days earlier, Nick’s mother called 911 to get medical assistance for Trey. She told dispatchers that Trey, “who had documented mental health issues” — according to the family’s wrongful death lawsuit filed in 2020, which was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette — had broken a television.
First responders from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and the Burton Fire District reported to the Pringle’s household.
The court records obtained by the Democrat Gazette state that Trey shifted from calm and “relatively compliant” to “physically aggressive” several times when deputies attempted to restrain him. The indication is that Trey went to his bedroom and deputies deployed a taser when he re-emerged.
Documents state that a firefighter used a headlock and took Trey to the floor. Deputies tased Trey three more times and handcuffed him.
Trey laid on the ground, as the firefighter stayed “constantly” by his head and neck area, court records say, thinking that he was breathing. The indication is that he would later find that that to be inaccurate.
EMS responders performed CPR, but it was too late. Trey had already suffered irreversible diffuse anoxic injury to his brain, which led to his death, the lawsuit says.
“One day he was here, the next day he wasn't, Pringle’s cousin Kailyn Glover told Basket Under Review. “We didn't really know how to cope with such a hard loss. He was a light in our family.”
Glover says Trey didn’t deserve the fate he received. To this day, Pringle attributes his brother’s death to police brutality. Each of them would quickly find out that there were opinions that conflicted with theirs, though.
The light within the family was gone and before they could finish their grieving process, they watched as the controversial nature of Trey’s death made it a public affair.
Glover says that news of the death and how it transpired was all over social media and became a big deal within the family’s hometown of Seabrook, South Carolina. The family noticed, too.
“It was crazy and you had the comments saying ‘he should've did this or this,’” Glover said. “We already lost a loved one, but now we have outside opinions speaking on stuff that they really don't know the real story behind. It was just like having to also deal with the law and go against a force, the state of Beaufort County. It was just like. ‘Why should we have to deal with that on top of grief?’”
As Pringle sits back after an Arkansas win in the SEC Tournament, he still can’t seem to wrap his mind around the thought that his brother is gone.
At least, Pringle can’t believe all the circumstances that surrounded Trey’s death or how long it’s been since his passing. Pringle says it feels like yesterday that he lost Trey and that it’s mind boggling to think about the loss his family suffered. He still thinks about it all the time, he says.
Losing Trey rocked Pringle’s world and he hasn’t fully recovered. Neither has the family, Glover says candidly. Pringle has taken on the weight of that reality as he’s tried to soften the blow on the rest of the family by being there for them.
At a point, he had to sacrifice his own grief in order to do that.
“I kind of held it all in, honestly because I had a family, so I wanted to be that man,” Pringle said. “To this day I don’t think I really grieved all the way. So, that's some stuff I work on. I talk to people. Like, I've been helped with it, but I don't think I've fully gotten over it.”
Pringle looked around after Trey’s death and all he saw was his mother and his nephew—who is Trey’s son. He describes his mother as his daughter in a way because of the way he’s been intentional about taking care of her. The three of them lived in close proximity and embraced each other throughout the process.
Glover says Pringle was always strong so that his family members didn’t feel as if they had to push off the searing pain of loss like he did. She estimates that he likely sat with the loss in his alone time, but the family didn’t often see Pringle sweat.
Pringle still doesn’t often let that side of him show as he thinks about his brother in the corner of Arkansas’ locker room. He’s eager to honor his brother’s life, but he’s intentional about not dampening the mood for his teammates after a significant win.
Those that know Pringle can tell that he’s clearly been impacted as a result of this experience, though. They seem to have a similar sentiment to his family members, though.
“Him losing his brother, that's tough, it would be tough on anybody,” Arkansas forward Trevon Brazile told Basket Under Review. “That’s my teammate, so it’s just about being there for him and keeping him positive. He's been great, I would never even know anything was bothering him.”
Pringle was as gifted a football player as there was in his area, but Trey had a different vision for him. Trey always had the foresight to know that his brother had a chance to be an exceptional basketball player if that was the path he chose.
The decision wasn’t all that clear when Trey passed, but Pringle growing into a frame that could make him an effective basketball player made it an easy decision to choose basketball. All these years later, Pringle is a two-time SEC Champion and is gearing up to make another March Madness run.
Trey was right and his brother knows it.
“This can make him happy and af the same time I can carry his legacy,” Pringle said. “That's kind of how I was thinking when I was younger, just to put myself in positions like this to be able to talk about him and to let people know about the type of person he was and who my family is.”
In regard to a question about the person that Trey was, Pringle visibly lights up. The Arkansas forward says he picked up a good portion of his personality off of his brother’s. Trey was goofy and loved to light up a room. He always cracked jokes, rapped aloud and made an effort to lift everyone else up when he was in their presence, Pringle says.
Arkansas wing Billy Richmond says he’d describe Pringle the same way.
When things were difficult or hostile, Glover says, Trey was always the one to successfully lighten the mood by cracking a joke. Trey always wanted everyone to be happy and made sure they knew that, she says, he always wanted everyone to be together. Even when Glover lived in a different state and didn’t think Trey was watching, he let her know out of the blue that he was keeping up with her basketball career.
“He was the life of the party,” Glover said. “He was always there supporting whatever anyone had going on, whether that was within the family or in the community. He was known for his good spirit and always just having that personality.”
Arkansas assistant Kenny Payne and forward Malique Ewin never met Trey. But, their descriptions of Pringle and how they align with what those who knew his brother say is almost jarring.
Payne describes Pringle as a unique personality and a high-character person that those within Arkansas’ locker room and community gravitate towards. Ewin raves about the energy that Pringle brings daily and the contagious nature of it.
Some of that is Pringle’s nature. Some of it is his brother’s personality shining through him. Either way, it appears as if Trey would be proud of what his brother has learned through the process of losing him.
“That’s what makes us who we are, is our journey, our past, our experiences,” Payne told Basket Under Review. “I know he has a great mother, met her, I know that he cares a lot about his family and that's important to him. That shows in how he carries itself. He represents his family real well.”
Pringle has heard his fair share of effusive praise for his skillset and what he can do on the floor over the years. He’s been at the mountaintop and has been immortalized by a fanbase forever. He’s also been conditioned not to put his trust in external opinion.
What Payne said about him as he addressed him as a representative of his family, though, may make him stop and think for a second. The statement means that the Arkansas big man is doing something right. It means that, even indirectly, Trey is making some sort of impact on people.
No matter how far removed from 2017 Pringle gets or what his platform looks like, he’ll never stop feeling that impact. In some ways the impact will always come in the form of the greif Pringle suffers as Trey misses out on his life’s biggest events.
But, Pringle chooses to think about is the ways in which Trey’s life—and the joy that he lived it with—will continue to allow him to prevail in the midst of his unimaginable loss. He knows that Trey would be proud of what he’s doing if he were still here, and that thought isn’t lost on him.
“I see something about him every day. That just keeps me going,” Pringle said. “We are still here, we are still pushing it, just ready to make history, man.”