Braxton Beverly: "I Was Shocked" That NCAA Rejected Appeal 

A week after the NCAA denied Braxton Beverly’s appeal to play for N.C. State this season, the freshman point guard has shared his perspective on the whole debacle in an essay.

This is the first time that Beverly’s discussed his ordeal at length since it began. After enrolling in summer classes at Ohio State as a member of the freshman recruiting class under former head coach Thad Matta, he decided to ask for his release shortly after Matta was fired in June. Once his release was granted, he chose to play for N.C. State instead. A few months later, though, he found out that he wouldn’t be able to—because of those few summer classes he’d attended at Ohio State. He hadn’t played in so much as an exhibition game (because he was only on campus as a student for three weeks in June), but his eligibility for the year was supposedly gone.

While Beverly has any number of reasons to be beyond frustrated here, he doesn’t particularly dwell on his emotions in today’s essay:

Coach [Kevin] Keatts has been awesome the whole time with this. Twice, he’s had to give me bad news. When my waiver was denied the first time a few weeks ago, Coach Keatts was calm. He told me he didn’t agree with the decision, but he talked me through the process and told me it wasn’t over yet. He let me know how we were filing the appeal and he was confident everything would be fine.

When he told me that my appeal had been denied earlier this week, I could tell how upset he was. I took it pretty hard. I was shocked. I think Coach was too. Some of my family might have taken it even harder, my uncle probably took it the hardest out of everybody.

Through all of this, I am still happy with the decision to come to NC State. I think it was the best move for me to set me up to be the most successful man I can be.

Beverly caps the essay by saying that he’d still like to play this season. Unfortunately, the NCAA has proven itself far too interested in stupidly obeying the letter of its own inane laws to let that happen.