Terrance Arceneaux Q&A
Terrance Arceneaux is an incoming freshman at the University of Houston, who is currently 37th in the 247Sports composite rankings for the 2022 high school class. Arceneaux ended his high school career as a back-to-back state champion who hit a buzzer-beating three-pointer in the 2021 state championship to give Beaumont United the title.
Arceneaux was rated the best player at the 2021 Nike EYBL Peach Jam by Cerebro Sports with a C-RAM of 9.9, averaging 19.4 points, 6.4 boards, 1.2 steals, and 1.9 blocks per game. He's a high-level event creator on D and slasher on O, who really puts pressure on opposing defenses in the half court and in transition.
In our recent interview at the University of Houston, Arceneaux goes into his high school career, expectations in college, the drop-off from old to new Paul George shoes, and more.
For the next installment of the Pro Insight Q&A series, we present 2022 Houston commit Terrance Arceneaux, from Beaumont, Texas:
Pro Insight: Could you share a little bit about your family and background?
Terrance Arceneaux: I live with both of my parents. I got an older brother named Brian Arceneaux. I'm from Beaumont, Texas. I go to, well I graduated from Beaumont United. A little thing about me is that I started to play basketball late, probably around 7th grade, but I fell in love with it. As soon as I stepped on the court, it was very fun and it's my passion now.
PI: What do your parents do?
TA: My dad, he works at a plant in Beaumont, and my mom, she works at FedEx. Loving parents, you know, they love and care for me so much and they've been supporting me my whole life and now it's time for me to give them joy.
PI: How did you get into basketball?
TA: I grew up watching my older brother play basketball. We used to travel with him a lot, you know. He played middle school ball. My parents didn't really believe in me playing basketball early on, but watching him just growing up, I wanted to follow in his footsteps and it just made me fall in love with the game even more seeing my big brother do it and seeing the joy on his face every time he stepped out there on the court.
PI: Why didn't your parents want you playing basketball early on?
TA: That's a good question. I never really asked them that. They just never really believed that it wasn't really competitive early on. So I guess that's the reason why, but I can't really tell you.
PI: What were the main things that your parents instilled in you growing up?
TA: Just hard work. They wake up every morning and go to work so they can take care of the family. And just knowing that if one day is bad, you still got a million other days to do something good. Just teaching me to stay focused and working hard.
PI: Did you live in Beaumont your whole life or did you move around a little bit growing up?
TA: Well, I was born and raised in Beaumont, but I went a little bit over to Lake Charles in Louisiana to where my grandma and my mom and dad’s parents live. I've been back-and-forth from there.
PI: So you mentioned that you started playing basketball late – were you always a pretty tall and athletic kid?
TA: Yeah, I really was always tall and athletic. You know, I started off playing the five. All I could do really is jump and grab rebounds, that's all I was really good for. Before, I never really touched a basketball but I always knew that I could jump and grab a ball, so that's all that I was really good for when I was young.
PI: Did you play any other sports before basketball?
TA: Baseball was my first sport. I played that for a while, I was really good at that. That was really the first sport that I thought I'd be playing that for the rest of my life until I stepped on the basketball court, but that was really my first sport. And I played basketball and football, I started that at the same time but I just fell in love with basketball.
PI: When did you quit football?
TA: My 8th grade year.
PI: How much older is your brother?
TA: He's four years older than me.
PI: I'm assuming you played basketball with him, how was that growing up?
TA: It was hard growing up, cause he was so much better than me, but you know I trained hard, worked hard, followed in his footsteps and now I beat him every time that we play. Growing up, he taught me a lot, how to be tough on the basketball court, he taught me how to shoot. He was a real good shooter growing up and he taught me different things like that.
PI: What age did you start beating him one-on-one?
TA: I started beating him around like 10th grade, I think. That's when I feel like I got real, real good at basketball, that's when I started training more. I was traveling a lot with AAU and different things like that. I was starting to find myself on the court. That's when I realized I got confident and I just started taking it to another level and I started beating him one-on-one.