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Part 2: You can read Part 1 here.

“This Is Our Last Year and We Understand What We Want”

This is the second half of Khamil Pierre’s conversation with Khiry of The Rundown WBB. In Part 1, she talked about claiming every rebound, the chip she still carries, and how her relationship with Wes Moore finally started to make sense. In this part of the interview, she gets into the rest of it: Zoe Brooks, why this Wolfpack already feels different, the rivalries she inherited in Raleigh, a Thanksgiving date with LSU, and the perspective shift she says she needed heading into her senior year.

The other half of Pierre’s standard is Zoe Brooks. She did not sell that relationship to Khiry as just friendship. She sold it as accountability.

“Zoe is a great player, obviously,” Pierre said. “But I think a big thing that separates her is she’s just a great teammate. She has such an uplifting personality… She’s going to pour into you as she would want to be poured back into.” Then she said the part that matters for this season. “Me and Zoe, in a sense, are kind of like a duo. We play really well together. We both kind of understand this is our last year and we understand what we want.”

That includes the hard conversations. If Brooks is not giving the team what it needs, Pierre said she is going to rip her in a way she would not with everybody else. And Brooks is going to know why. “That’s not only coming from a place of love, but a place of expectation… I need you to do better because when you do better, I do better. This whole team does better.” It goes both ways. Brooks will get into Pierre just as fast. Next play. Next day. No lingering.

As for the rest of the Wolfpack, Pierre is not dressing last season up. “I think a way better team than last season. None of us were happy how we ended the season.” She says the gym already feels different. Better chemistry on and off the floor. More work going in. Clearer roles because there is enough talent that nobody can just float through a night. One name she volunteered before everybody else starts repeating it: Desiree Wooten, the Colorado transfer. “I think people are going to love her game. She can pass the ball insanely well. She can shoot the three like you wouldn’t believe.” Pierre thinks folks have slept on her because she has moved schools and because she is undersized. Pierre is not buying either one. “She’s going to get to the rim. She’s not afraid of anything… I think she’ll be really good for us this year.” The expectations around this group are high. Pierre is not interested in talking them down. “I think there’s no reason why we can’t achieve all of those.”

She is still a West Coast kid who misses Phoenix weather and still finds Raleigh a little slow. The part of North Carolina she has fully inherited is the rivalry. “Yeah. We don’t like them,” she told Khiry about the schools up the road. “Come game time, we’re going to talk trash.” One night in particular is still living rent-free. “I think it was UNC was dancing on our logo when they beat us. Oh, we ain’t forget that.” That chip is coming with them. The fake hatred is not. Pierre said she saw some Duke players over the weekend and they were “really nice people.” Off the floor, it is normal. On the floor, it is not a truce. “I don’t mean like we all this cool. We still want to beat them and everything. So yeah, we’ll see who comes out on top this year, but hopefully it’s us.”

She is already circling another date too: LSU in a Thanksgiving tournament. Pierre has always been into playing Kim Mulkey teams. The physicality. The talk. The whole environment. “I know they’re going to come fired up and they’re going to talk trash, and I just love that environment.” Some of those LSU players are friends when the lights are off. When they come on, she wants a fight. “That should be a game everyone looks forward to because it’s going to be a good back and forth.”

The most honest thing she told Khiry might not even be about boards or rivalries. It was about herself. Last year, too much of her off-court mood followed her into the gym. Tired. Frustrated. Shot off. She let it sit on her. “The biggest thing for me going into my senior year… is my perspective.” It took her three years to believe the small stuff actually matters: how you walk in the gym, whether you find some joy when a teammate finally gets something she has been fighting for, the energy you bring when you do not feel like being there. That is the Pierre she is trying to be now. Still the most demanding rebounder in the building. Still talking trash. Still chasing a WNBA roster. Just not letting her own head shrink the night anymore.

Reynolds will help with that. Pierre does not treat the crowd like wallpaper. “I don’t think we ever have games where we don’t have a big crowd show up,” she said. Late tip or midday game, the building shows up, and that support “means so much more than I think they know themselves.” Her end of the deal is simple. Wave. Sign. Talk. Play hard. Put on a show. “At the end of the day, they’re people too… Just being able to have that connection with them and let them know that we really appreciate them, that goes a long way.”

That is the attitude she carried through the whole interview. Work harder. Expect more. Stay grateful for the people in the building. And walk into this last year in Raleigh believing there is no reason this team, or this version of her, cannot be exactly what they set out to be.