Braxton Beverly: "I Feel Good"

NC State junior guard Braxton Beverly met with the media to discuss the season opener against Georgia Tech.

NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.

Coach said he’d start growing facial hair if you shot 45% from three.
He did say that. I’d like to see if he keeps his word on that.

More on Georgia Tech...
We’re going back over how the game went last year and learn from the mistakes we made.  We’re all excited that it’s our first game and opening with an ACC opponent. We’re excited about that.

How do you like opening with an ACC team vs. the Sisters of the Poor?
I think it’s really good. It’s good for our confidence.

As good as our conference is from top to bottom, it’s great for us to open with a really talented team like that.

How do you feel?
I feel good. I’m getting back to where I was.

Can we interpret that you’re playing tomorrow?
Yes.

With some guys not practicing, how has it affected preparing?
It’s been tough, it’s been a challenge. Everybody we have is bringing it, 100 percent, a lot of energy to practice.

Hope everyone can get healed up and feeling good, especially for tomorrow. It’s just a little adversity we’ve had to deal with.

Have you dialed back the tempo?
We’re still going normal tempo. Maybe not as long, but we’re still going hard. It’s part of the game. There will be injuries. We have to keep playing like we always do.

With Blake Harris departing, how much point guard do you see yourself playing?
We have to wait and see. It’s on coach, whatever he thinks is best.

Is it hard to transfer your mindset between point guard and shooting guard?
Not necessarily. I played point guard my whole life until I got here and played a little more two. It’s not that big of an adjustment.

How big of a challenge is preparing for them?
That is a challenge. They play the zone on the defensive side, and then what they do offensively, it’s definitely been a challenge.

For a lot of the new guys it’s new for them. You probably wouldn’t expect to come to the ACC and play a team running zone and the Princeton offense.  

It takes a lot of locking in on our side to make sure we get it down.

Did you learn from last year’s game?
We learned. Personally, I’ve talked to every coach on our staff to see what went wrong and what we need to fix.

We’ve had conversations over the last week or so about that.

Is that a loss that sticks with you longer than others?
I’d say it would because it was our last game of the regular season, a little more fresh... as heart-breaking as that one was, it’s still fresh on the mind.