Part 1
“It’s My Ball”: Khamil Pierre’s Standard for Senior Year
Raleigh’s about to get Khamil Pierre for one more year, and if her sit-down with Khiry of The Rundown WBB is any indication, she is not coming back quiet.
Pierre does not talk about rebounding like some cute little skill she picked up along the way. She talks about it like it belongs to her. The 6-foot-2 NC State forward led the Power Four on the glass last season at 11.9 boards a night, stacked 22 double-doubles, and made first-team All-ACC in her first year after leaving Vanderbilt. Sitting with Khiry heading into her senior season, she sounded less like someone admiring the résumé and more like someone still waiting on the rest of the country to catch up.
“I might not be the tallest on the court, but I’m 6’2″ and I’m athletic,” Pierre told The Rundown WBB. “So to me, I don’t see a reason why every game I shouldn’t lead both teams in boards, let alone the country.”
That is Pierre in a sentence. Blunt. Competitive. Not asking permission.
When a shot goes up, she is not running through a scouting report in her head. She is claiming the ball. “That it’s my ball, really,” she said. Size helps. Athleticism helps. Want matters more. “Anyone can grab a rebound. It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest or the smallest. It’s just who wants it more… There’s stronger girls, there’s bigger girls, probably girls who can jump higher, but if I want it more, I’m going to get that ball.”
That edge runs through just about everything she told Khiry. Pierre got to basketball later than a lot of high-major stars after walking away from a real soccer future in Arizona. People told her she was raw. Overlooked. Not developed enough. Not ranked high enough. A monster year in Raleigh did not wash that out. If anything, it made her more sure of what she already believed: she is one of the best players in the country, even if the follower counts and brand deals do not always line up with the box score. Her move is simple. Stay in her lane. Get her work done. Let the court do the talking.
Her relationship with Wes Moore sounds like it took a minute to land the same way. “It’s tough. I’m not going to lie,” she said. “I think last season I kind of struggled with certain things he would say, or how he would act towards me. I felt like it was rude in a sense.” Then it clicked. “Once I finally understood, Coach Moore really does care for me, and he thinks I can be greater than probably what I think. So it all comes from love.”
She still remembers one practice that lit her up. Moore told her she would be lucky if a team even let her play for them. Pierre was hot. “I remember that day I was hot. I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to get drafted.’ And we were going back and forth at a great practice.” Looking back, she does not treat that like a cheap shot. She treats it like a coach pushing the players he expects more from. Off the floor, she calls Moore “a super good person” who wants his team to be good people first. On the floor, she thinks this is the year that pressure turns into the version of herself she has been chasing. “Especially this season, I really think he’s going to help build me into exactly what I need to be, but more. So I’m excited, regardless of how it comes out.”
That version of Pierre does not stop with the glass or with Moore. In Part 2 of her conversation with Khiry, she gets into the other half of this senior year: her partnership with Zoe Brooks, why she thinks this Wolfpack is already different, the UNC logo NC State has not forgotten, a Thanksgiving date with Kim Mulkey’s LSU team, and the perspective shift she says finally caught up to her.
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