WATCH: Beverly, Dorn Talk Penn State Win... Auburn Matchup

NC State guards Braxton Beverly and Torin Dorn met with the media today to discuss the Penn State win and the upcoming game against No. 8 Auburn.

NOTE: Click each video above to watch the interview.

Sophomore Guard Braxton Beverly

You guys have had some success against ranked teams, top 10 teams. What do you think the key in some of those big wins has been?
Just always come ready to play.

Don't look too far...  not downgrading them, not saying they aren’t good, but just knowing the type of team we have, what we’re capable of doing every day.

How high is the confidence right now?
I’m not going to say it's any different than what it was. We know the kind of team we have and we know what we're capable of.

We were able to show it this weekend against a good Penn State team.

Coach said you may grow the beard back. Is this going to be a thing where you may shave it off if you have a poor game?
[Laughing] Coach kind of came up with that himself.  It grows real fast so to keep it off, I have to shave it every so often.

I’m not going to say I’m going to necessarily grow it back, but we’ll see.

Why does the effort level seem so high with you guys? Is it because you have depth and can play hard because you have so many guys?
I think that’s part of it.

We know that if we play ourselves to exhaustion, one of our brothers will come in and pick it up right after us. 

That’s something our coaches preach everyday, and it’s something we take pride in.  

Senior Guard Torin Dorn

How difficult is that running seven-footer, one of your best plays against Penn State?
It’s not really difficult when you work on it.

You play so hard as a group.
I think it’s numbers. We've got 10 guys that play hard every day in practice.  It’s something that our coaches preach and something that we do every day.

When you make playing hard a habit, it's not really foreign to you when you get in the game.

So if you don’t play hard you don’t play?
Exactly.  It’s really simple.

Putting you on the spot here, but that that wasn't always the equation, right?
Not at all.

As we grew as a team and as the regime changed, I feel like that was something that was a major point of emphasis... playing hard and play hard all the time.

Fans seem appreciative of that, too, right?
For sure. We have the best fans in the country, and I think they can appreciate it when they see a product on the floor that plays extremely hard and gives everything they have.

How big of a deal is it to be a starter on the team?
I don't think there are starters on the team. We have guys with a little more experience than others, but everybody plays extremely hard and everybody earns their spot. 

Starting is one thing, but it's really about who finishes and who is making an impact when they are in the game.

How much did it pay off on Saturday the last seven or eight minutes, the track workouts?
You can see it in the last eight minutes of games when other teams are getting tired and we're just getting started.

I think that's something that coach brought, that part of his mentality, and we've embodied that.

It's definitely something that helps us.

Did you raise your eyebrows when you saw Auburn on the schedule?
Definitely, we try to look at every game as its own individual game and take it one game at a time, but at the beginning of the season it’s definitely one you circle and say these are good matchups.

That’s why you play college basketball, to play against good teams, so it should be fun.