CHARLOTTE — Queens coach Grant Leonard paced the locker room in front of his team before pointing to guard Yoav Berman.

“The guy who’s got blood all over his knees,” Leonard said, identifying him by his characteristics before saying his name.

His Royals teammates, fresh off a Feb. 14 win over Lipscomb, cheered as Berman stood. A few teammates grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. He received Queens’ highest honor: Street Dog of the Game.

It was more than a title. It made him the temporary owner of Buddy.

Buddy the Street Dog, a German Shepherd figurine, has become the identity of Queens basketball, a tournament first-timer from a Charlotte university of under 2,000 students. The Royals, ASUN conference champions, qualified for the bracket in their first year of eligibility for the tournament and fourth in Division I. The 15-seed will face two-seed Purdue in St. Louis on Friday night.

“It’s a huge deal. It’s not just about basketball. That’s for our entire community. For admissions. For everyone in the school to get recognized,” Leonard said. “That’s why we went Division I.”

Leonard, who has been on Queens’ staff since 2013 and head coach since 2022, likes to introduce a theme as his team prepares for a season. This season, it was doing tough things. That meant diving on the floor and getting up with bloody elbows and knees. Or coming away with a loose ball that the odds said the other team should have; Coming off the bench and providing a game-changing boost; Or guarding the other team’s best player and expending your energy chasing him through screens.

His team insisted they were dogs, that they were up to the task. Still, one of Leonard’s assistants had a question.

Are you street dogs? Or are you Petco dogs?

Players insisted they were the former. And for Leonard, the idea to let them prove it every game was born.

He searched Amazon for a Rottweiler but couldn’t find one he liked. Then, he spotted a German Shepherd. He clicked to buy it for $150, and a few days into Queens’ season, it showed up in the locker room.

Unannounced.

“Some guys were scared when they first walked in. Like, ‘Coach, there’s a dog in there,’” Leonard said. “He looks real.”

Leonard told the team to come up with a name, but nothing stuck. The team just called him their buddy, and eventually, he came to be known as Buddy.

The current Buddy, the one the team brought to St. Louis this week, is Buddy II. Leonard told reporters this week that Buddy I was injured in a celebration after a win over Florida Gulf Coast in January.

Inside the locker room, Buddy became synonymous with Queens basketball.

Queens coach Grant Leonard bought Buddy for $150 on Amazon. (Courtesy of Queens University)

“It shows it’s not about scoring or highlights,” said guard Nasir Mann, who’s earned Buddy more games than any other player this season. “Who’s the backbone?”

Leonard said his methods for awarding Buddy are “vibes-based.” Sometimes, he consults with the staff, but not always. Afterward, the player who receives the honor gets to sit with Buddy at his locker until the next game.

The team touches Buddy before every game as they leave the locker room. In part for luck. And in part as a reminder: Do the dirty work. Be a street dog.

“They’re ecstatic. Players loved it. They embraced it the right way. It’s not the guy who scores the most points or gets the most rebounds,” Leonard said. “It’s the guy who sacrifices himself for the team. They’ve bought into that’s what wins games.”

This year, something new helped Queens put itself on the map. Truly. On Sunday, Purdue center Oscar Cluff was asked what he knew about Queens after the bracket was announced.

“It’s in New York somewhere,” he said.

Queens players are used to getting it in their own city. The university didn’t admit men until the late 1940s. The basketball program didn’t begin play until 1989. It became successful in Division II, making Final Fours in 2003 and 2018 and routinely winning 30 games a season. Yet, it wasn’t enough to get noticed.

“If you ask people in Charlotte, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of Queens? You get a lot of, ‘What’s that?’” Mann said. “I feel like there’s not a lot of respect for Queens. People don’t know where it is. This shows people, we’re the real deal.”

More importantly, it put them in the bracket. Queens (21-13) finished third in the ASUN in the regular season, but beat the top two teams — Austin Peay and Central Arkansas — in the semifinals and finals of the conference tournament, respectively.

And now, with Buddy in tow, the program has an opportunity it’s never had before.

“To win would be an amazing accomplishment. We’re not going there just to smell the roses,” Leonard said. “The way our team scores the ball, we have a chance in any game. It would be life-changing for everyone around here.”