ACC MEDIA DAY: Allerik Freeman
NC State senior guard Allerik Freeman met with the media at ACC Media Day in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Tell us about Lennard. Is he just as hold?
Man, on the court, I would say Lennard is probably the heart and soul of the team. He wins in practice, every 50/50 battle, every loose ball, every rebound. He'll throw illegal screens in there every now and then. But no, I would say off the court, he's definitely somebody that leads by example, too. I probably am the oldest on the team, but I'd definitely say he acts the oldest.
Just what you can say about your adversity and everything that you went through in your career, coming to NC State and the decision to be at NC State.
You know, I think it was -- I really have enjoyed my time here at NC State. I just tried to take advantage of every single day. I think it was a great choice and opportunity here for what the situation presents and what I wanted as a player. I think I really feel like I can really help the team, and I feel like the team really gives me an opportunity to show what I couldn't show in the past few seasons.
I think that we all go through adversity in life, one way or one time or another, and some people go through adversity early on. Some people go through adversity later, and it's just about how you respond to it. We're all going to be faced with it, and just you go through things in life that prepare you.
What I've been through in the past, what I've been through in my journey, it's not the last time I'm going to go through adversity, and everybody in this room, we're going to go through adversity multiple times in our life. What the lessons that we learned are going to help us prepare for the future, future challenges that we have and the success that we have and the failures that we have.
If Coach yells out Freeman in practice, who most likely is he angry at or happy with?
It's probably angry with me and happy with him.
When you think about the total of the season, we've asked other student-athletes this, to be successful this year, do you have to raise a piece of hardware? Do you have to have a trophy?
I think it depends on who you ask. For every team, there's different goals. For us -- I can't speak for anybody else, but for our team, at the end of the year, we want to have a piece of hardware. We want to have the trophy for everything that we competed in, the ACC tournament, the NCAA tournament, when we go to the Bahamas. We're not going into any game, any tournament, any situation, any scrimmage, any exhibition, anything, not planning on winning not planning on being victorious.
And I think if anybody is, then I think you're doing the wrong thing right now with your life. I think anything anybody does, you should always want to be the best, you should always want to come in first. That's one thing that we learned, sometimes the hard way, every single day in practice. It's -- winning is -- it becomes who you are and everything that you do. That's how we try to approach everything that we get faced with.