Purdue is in a familiar spot as a top two seed ready to face off a college whose geographical placement reads like a trivia question.

This time, Purdue is the #2 seed in the West Region and will play the ASUN Tournament Champs, Queens.

Sorry, Oscar, not that Queens.

Instead, Queens, a small college from Charlotte, North Carolina, will be making its first tournament appearance against a Purdue team that starts three seniors who have been a 1 or 2 seed three of their four years playing.

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Queens 18-13 (13-5) was the three seed in the ASUN Conference Tournament and pulled off the overtime upset over Central Arkansas 98-93.

It is Queens first trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Queens challenged its program in the non-conference with a healthy meal of top-100 teams. Queens played at Villanova, Wake Forest, Arkansas, Auburn and Virginia. It lost all of those games without much drama.

The throughline in all those games is that Queens defense could not hang with any of those teams. It gave up 94 points to Villanova and Virginia, and over 100 points to the other three teams.

But Queens showed resiliency and a streakiness that has made them a dangerous team in the ASUN.

It bounced back from its brutal non-conference finish to win its first seven conference games.
Drew will have a more in-depth numbers breakdown so we will stick to this. Queens is a good offensive team, with shooting and scoring throughout the roster. It has six players averaging double-figures that have played together and played well.

Queens, much like Purdue, relies mostly on players brought to and developed by its own programs. Just three players in its rotation have come from elsewhere with Avantae Parker coming from Georgia Southern, Carson Schwieger playing a year at Valparaiso, and Gus Larson who played at Penn for two years, California a year, and now finishing his career at Queens.
Queens has four guards scoring double-figures: Nasir Mann, Jordan Watford, Yoav Berman, and Chris Ashby.
Those three guards are joined in the scoring bonanza by stretch forward Carson Schwieger who is shooting over 41% from three on more than 200 attempts on the season.

Avantae Parker is the sixth double-figure scorer, a 6-9 throwback who dominates down low and in the middle of the paint, shooting 70% from inside the arc, but doesn’t naturally spread the floor. He looks to score inside and in the post.

Queens is going to shoot a lot of threes, led by Schwieger and Chris Ashby, but what makes them unique is that it gets even more efficient from inside.

Queens lacks size, real post pounders, and instead relies on skill inside and a lot of shooting on the perimeter. Queens is shooting nearly 60% as a team from inside the arc. Combine that with a nearly 36% mark from three and you have a team that only takes efficient shots. It’s an offensive built on metrics and with the idea of maximizing every possession and every shot.

Queens is an offensive team and it will score points against Purdue even if it lacks physical presences that match up with Purdue.
But on the defensive end, Queens is an even stronger extreme. It does almost nothing metrically well on the defensive team. It was able to score teams in its own conferences, but the defense’s deficiencies allowed all the tournament quality teams it played to go nuclear on offense.

In particular, and what could soothe any FDU PTSD from Purdue fans, Queens lacks defensive pressure at all levels. It doesn’t have size outside or on the wings. It doesn’t get into dribblers or shooters. It doesn’t fight through screens or track shooters particularly well. If a team wants to get up threes against Queens, it’s going to get good looks from the perimeter.

Queens also lacks heft and height inside and struggles to grab rebounds on both ends.

But offense wins in March, as Matt Painter said about his own team. This will be an interesting showdown for Purdue. The line is over 20 leaning Boilers. It shouldn’t be close, but Queens is good enough on offense to let off some fireworks.

Purdue has been here before. FDU’s defense was one of the worst in the country and found a unique gameplan to stall Purdue’s offense when Purdue fell as only the second ever 1-16 upset. That experience should lead to Purdue staying locked in even in the first round.
That’s been your first look at Queens. We’ll have more and more breakdowns and coverage throughout the week as Purdue opens the NCAA Tournament in St. Louis on Friday.