ACC MEDIA DAY: Lennard Freeman
NC State senior forward Lennard Freeman met with the media at ACC Media Day in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Just what you can say about growing through adversity and going through your injury and what you can say you're excited about this year and what you learned from that time.
I learned a lot. Sitting out every game was like a film session, and you see the spots that people should have done or the moves that people should have done like in the moment. Like you're watching other teams play and you're watching us place like, oh, he should have did that there.
It was just a great experience, and that time off just made me more hungry since I wasn't able to work out or help my team out, put me in a different mindset that this is my last one, and I've got to go twice as hard for the time I was hurt.
You hopefully are going to have a good final season; what is it that you have to do to leave the program in good shape for this time next year?
We just want to work hard. I think just leave it all on the table. This is my last year. I don't want to leave with any regrets. I want to go out by going to the tournament, and that's my goal, just getting right back to the tournament.
I've been there the first two years, and my second two we haven't been there. Me experiencing that, that's the only goal, just don't leave anything, knowing that this is my last go-around. I don't want to be sitting here next year saying I wish I could have done this or I wish I could have done that. I want to leave it all out there.
Coach was fairly open that he said he knows you guys will not be picked high here, and you guys will use that directly as a motivating factor. Has he explained that to you and made it clear that you guys need to prove yourself?
Oh, yeah. I mean, we kind of figured that. We have a lot of new pieces, new coaches, so I'm not surprised that we're not picked high. Hopefully y'all pick us last, honestly, so we can only go up from there.
No disrespect, but we work too hard for us to actually like -- not say care, but I'm a competitor, so if you sit here and tell me that I'm going to be 15 or 14 out of 15 teams, then it's just going to put me in a different mindset and make me go twice as hard and make me want to prove everyone wrong, so go ahead and pick us last, please.
What are you guys learning from Coach, and what do you think he's learning from you?
I feel like I can only speak for myself. I feel like that I'm learning to compete and everything. Coach makes you become a competitor. Every drill we do, it's a winner and a loser, so he makes you bring it every day.
I think that's the main thing with Coach -- he doesn't accept anything other than 110 percent. Every day in practice, you know you're going to go hard, you're going to give it your all, and I think that's what I learned from him, just how to be an extremely hard competitor. I'm not really sure what he learned from us yet. It's hard to get in Coach Keatts` head.
We're all getting to learn him a little bit. What have you learned about this teammate?
Al Freeman, Al is different. On the court, he's a great player. He's a great scorer. I've been seeing him -- we graduated in high school, same class, so I've been seeing him for a while.
He's a great scorer, a great player, and he's one of the leaders on the team off the court. He's like the granddad of the team. He makes sure he does the right thing and he leads by example. He's just a great leader, great player overall.