Zoe Brooks has been around NC State long enough to know what the program used to look like, and long enough to know what this version of it has to be.

At ACC Tipoff on Monday, the senior guard sounded less like someone counting down a farewell tour and more like someone who simply decided Raleigh still fit. Fourth years are rarer than they used to be. Brooks stayed anyway.

“I’m a person who doesn’t like change,” she said. “I’m really comfortable here, and I like it here a lot. Why leave and chase money or chase whatever when I’m successful here and I genuinely like it here?”

That comfort has a co-star. Khamil Pierre is back too, and Brooks said Pierre told people one of the big reasons the offseason talks went the way they did was because Brooks was returning. A year in, Brooks already talks about her like an old teammate.

“I think we’re a good one-two punch,” Brooks said. “If I’m not doing well one game, I know she’ll come and get on me and help pick me up. And if she’s not doing well, she knows I’m going to come pick her up.”

The dream version of that, she said, looks a lot like the last NC State backcourt that left together. Being drafted with Pierre — “another Saniya-and-Aziaha duo” — is the goal. First round for both would be even better. A fifth year is there if she needs it, and she called that relieving, but she is treating this season as the last one. Getting drafted is the focus.

The roster around them is different from the one Brooks grew up in. Coach Wes Moore has been open that the Wolfpack are missing some of the length they used to lean on, and Brooks did not dress that up. Smaller means they have to run, press, and chase deflections. Pack-it-in defense is out. Go, go, go is in.

“Everybody wants to push the ball, but then you got to run,” she said. “We have to run because we’re so much smaller than a lot of other teams.”

Moore’s other message has not changed: defense wins games, and if practice feels like a job, don’t bother showing up. Brooks’ impression of him, delivered with a laugh, was basically one line on repeat: “Defensive line, you got to move.”

She has had to move herself this offseason. Coming off an injury, Brooks said she hit mental slumps and could have cut rehab down to a couple days a week and slowed the whole thing down. She didn’t. Five days a week, ice three or four times a day, work at home when she was away from the training staff.

“I really realized I really want it,” she said.

On the floor, that want shows up in the stuff she has always been good at and the stuff she says she is better at now. Pierre has been telling people Brooks doesn’t miss in practice. Brooks shrugged that off as a hot streak and a mindset shift: everything at 100 percent. The finishing is still the part that looks unfair from floor level — a 5-foot-10 guard carving through 6-4 and 6-5 bodies because she is strong and, in her words, crafty. Pierre’s gravity helps. Help off Brooks and Pierre gets the layup. Stay home and Brooks gets it. Pick your poison.

The leadership part took longer. Early on, she said, she could get beat and trust River Baldwin to take the charge or erase the shot. That safety net is gone. Small details she used to think the team could make up for later are the details she pays attention to now.

She sees some of that glue in Qadence Samuels, the player she cast in the Madison Hayes role: floor dives, claps, energy, the piece every team needs. And she likes what she is seeing from sophomores Ky’She Lunan and Adelaide Jernigan, who she said are in the gym every day because they want real minutes.

The calendar still has a personal date circled. Brooks’ first game in New Jersey is going to be a scene — high school teammates, old coaches, parents, friends, and a church group bringing a bus. She already warned people to dress up.

Until then, the job is simpler than the portal math that could have sent her somewhere else. Stay comfortable. Run anyway. Play defense. Have fun. And try to leave with Pierre the same way Saniya Rivers and Aziaha James did.