Ex-Landstown star's best answer to taunts is points

Sometimes, the taunts are simple.

"Library Man!" came the refrain a couple of weeks ago at Indiana.

Others can't be printed in this newspaper.

And Stanley Pringle hears it all.

"I've got ears," the Penn State sharpshooter said. "How can you not hear it? They're definitely trying to get in my head."

Apparently, the hecklers need some new material. Because throughout what's been a transformational season in Happy Valley, Pringle keeps getting the last word.

Although they've struggled of late, the Nittany Lions (17-7) already have more victories than in any season since 2000-01. Their piece de resistance came on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Nittany Lions defeated then-No. 9 Michigan State to snap a lifetime 0-for-16 drought in East Lansing.

Pringle's resurgence has been even more dramatic. A year ago, the former Landstown High star averaged 6.9 points a game. Last spring, a bizarre episode in a Penn State library turned him into an Internet punch line.

Today, however, Pringle has blossomed into one of the most dangerous shooters in the country. The 6-foot-1 senior has doubled last year's scoring average (13.5, 11th in the Big Ten) and has hit a conference-high 47.4 percent of his 3-point attempts.

Perhaps most surprisingly, he's been at his best in road games, where his response to the ridicule has been some of the best performances of his career. He dropped a career-high 26 at Wisconsin, including 20 of his team's final 27.

Two weeks later at Indiana, he turned in 19 points, six assists, zero turnovers and 33 minutes in an 11-point victory.

Heading into the Michigan State game, Pringle averaged nearly 20 points (19.8) in road games, eight more than he produced at home.

"It's funny, because the more noise they make, the better I seem to like it," Pringle said. "Like when we were at Purdue, the guys were yelling all this stuff when I was at the free throw line, and I made both of them. The next time, they didn't say anything, and I missed one. I was like, 'Man!' "

Star turns on the court from Pringle should come as no surprise to those who watched him at Landstown. Percy Harvin may have been the biggest name among Eagles, but Pringle was the basketball team's unquestioned star - a deadly shooter (18.6 ppg), a tenacious defender and the engine that fueled Landstown to the state championship game.

But because of a late growth spurt, Pringle didn't attract major-college attention until his senior year.

By then, he'd already committed to Radford. Landstown coach Dwight Robinson crowed that the Virginia low-major program was getting a steal.

But while Pringle had big-time performances on the court, big-time grades didn't follow. As a result, Florida's Pasco-Hernando Community College wound up getting the steal.

Two years and one conference Player of the Year award later, Pringle accepted an offer from Marshall, only to request a release when the Thundering Herd's coach resigned. Only then did Penn State come calling, finally sealing Pringle's long-held dream of playing big-time college ball.

"I didn't really want to go to Radford, and I didn't really want to go to Marshall," Pringle said. "I always believed I should be playing at this level."

Pringle enjoyed a solid, if uneven, first season with the Nittany Lions. But his biggest headlines came last April, when he was charged with open lewdness and disorderly conduct after a woman accused him of masturbating in the Pattee Library.

Pringle denied the charges, telling police he merely had "a bad habit of putting his hand down his pants."

"Why would I need to masturbate?" Pringle told police, according to the criminal complaint filed against him. "This is how I chill, ma'am."

Pringle is in position to avoid serious legal trouble. In August, he was placed in an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition Program for first-time offenders and, upon completion of a year of probation, can get the charges dismissed.

Still, newspaper and Internet sites such as deadspin.com had a field day with both the incident and Pringle's remarks, rankling him to this day.

"It was all bull," said Pringle, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence. "One person falsely accuses you of something, and every media outlet in the world just jumps on it and blows it all out of proportion."

But instead of throwing him off his game, Pringle said the incident has instead sharpened his focus on the court. And much to the delight of Penn State fans, his numbers bear that.

"That's my answer to everything," Pringle said. "People can say what they want.

"I just like to go out there and silence the crowd."

Paul White, (757) 418-1447, paul.white@pilotonline.com