CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Queens learned a week ago it would be dancing for the first time in program history.<\/p>\n
Now the Royals know who their dance partner will be in the NCAA Tournament. <\/p>\n
Queens earned a 15 seed in the West Regional, and will face 2-seed Purdue in the first round on March 20 in St. Louis. <\/p>\n
Nearly a thousand people packed out Curry Arena on Selection Sunday for a watch party to celebrate the program\u2019s first-ever trip to March Madness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all sorts of emotions,\u201d head coach Grant Leonard said of the moment he saw Queens listed in the bracket. \u201cIt was just a dream come true. As a little kid you dream of being a part of March Madness, and here you are. It\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leonard said his coaching staff prepped as if Purdue would be 3-seed, so Queens hasn\u2019t done much advance scouting on the Boilermakers over the last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a lot of work on us (in practice), now we have a few things we\u2019re going to have to tweak to go at Purdue,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cThey have probably the best point guard in the country. They have a depth of post players that we\u2019re going to have to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Purdue comes into March Madness fresh off a Big 10 Championship after topping Michigan in the conference tournament Sunday afternoon. <\/p>\n
\u201cBig 10 basketball is so different,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cIt\u2019s so physical, and big and strong. We\u2019re going to have to ramp up to handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tip-off between the Royals and Boilermakers will be March 20 at 7:35 p.m., the game will be broadcast on TruTV.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WBTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Queens learned a week ago it would be dancing for the first time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-164604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}