CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – The Queens University men\u2019s basketball team is on the road in its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance.<\/p>\n
Wednesday was an exciting day on campus, and the energy was high as fans waited to see if the Royals could shock the world in the tournament.<\/p>\n
Students and fans sent the team off with cheers and high-fives for round one of the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vibes have just been really fun,\u201d said graduate student Catherine Thompson. <\/p>\n
A historic week for Queens University as the men\u2019s basketball team heads off for their first trip to the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI obviously want them to win it all,\u201d said Emily Thompson, a graduate student. \u201cOne of my brackets is them going all the way, winning the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
The university officially became a Division 1 school in July 2025. In their first eligible season, the team hopes they can be the Cinderella story of the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cQueens being really small and, being the size of a city block, this is definitely big,\u201d Emily said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people be like, \u2018Oh, I didn\u2019t even know that was a school. I thought it was in New York.\u2019 So having another school in North Carolina in the tourney is big.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a big moment for the future Royals from Meyers Park Traditional Elementary School, who went next door to cheer on the players as they loaded the bus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is who they get to look up to, and so making sure that there\u2019s representation for them as well,\u201d said Abigail Lemon, a Queens alum and teacher at Meyers Park Traditional. \u201cA lot of them want to aspire to be athletes just like them. So knowing that this can be a goal in their life is exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they make the trek to St. Louis, the team and fans are ready for a battle on the hardwood.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying Purdue, it\u2019s going to be tough, but I have faith. I think we can definitely give everybody a good show on Friday night,\u201d Emily said. <\/p>\n
The Royals face off against the Purdue Boilermakers on Friday at 7:35 p.m. Queens is hosting a watch party at Legion Brewing in South Park for anyone who wants to come out and cheer on the team. You\u2019re asked to register in advance<\/a> if you plan on attending. <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WBTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – The Queens University men\u2019s basketball team is on the road in its first-ever NCAA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[16860,9,24,63,122,124,123,68740],"class_list":["post-167526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-16860","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-wspix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167526","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=167526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}