ST. LOUIS (WISH) \u2014 No. 2 seed Purdue is gearing up for its 11th straight NCAA Tournament appearance, taking on No. 15 seed Queens.<\/p>\n
Returning to the tournament is something the Boilermakers do not take for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my favorite time of year, so I\u2019m just ready to get out there and get on that court,\u201d Purdue sophomore guard Gicarri Harris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dream,\u201d Purdue senior center Oscar Cluff said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a lot of people\u2019s dreams so to be able to do it, is unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Purdue is riding high into March madness after running the table in the big ten tournament last week. The 2-seed Boilers have plenty of experience in the big dance\u2026 but have also felt the pain of being upset by a high seed. That\u2019s exactly why they\u2019re not overlooking 15-seed Queens.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a lot of people, it\u2019s probably always in the back of their mind,\u201d Purdue senior forward Trey Kaufman-Renn said. \u201cIf that\u2019s what it takes to get you to respect a high seed team, it is what it is. But I think even us watching the film, we have got a lot of respect for Queens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re really good offensively, so we\u2019ve got to be great like we have been these past four games and I think defensively just be locked in and ready to go,\u201d Purdue senior guard Braden Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard work for everybody no matter what your seed is to get in this position, but this is what it\u2019s about,\u201d Purdue head coach Matt Painter said. \u201cWe\u2019re always thinking about ways to improve for this time and obviously we\u2019ve had success but we\u2019ve also had failure\u2026 Got a lot of respect for Queens and what they have been able to do. It is going to be a tough game for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queens makes its NCAA Tournament debut in their first year eligible to play in March Madness. In fact, Queens is the smallest school to ever punch their ticket to the Big Dance \u2013 with an enrollment at just 1,500 students. They might be small but they\u2019re more than determined to make their mark on March.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a once in a lifetime experience,\u201d Queens senior guard Nasir Mann said. \u201cI feel like our team is very good at separating when we need to be serious and when we can enjoy the moment\u2026 At the end of the day we do have to take care of business\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur guys got to be unbelievably locked in to climb that mountain,\u201d Queens head coach Grant Leonard said. \u201cI know when you have an All-American point guard who\u2019s a senior, that is not an easy feat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two offensive teams ready to battle it out. Exactly how March should be. Tipoff for the matchup is scheduled for 7:35 p.m. on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS (WISH) \u2014 No. 2 seed Purdue is gearing up for its 11th straight NCAA Tournament appearance,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-168897","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\/168897","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=168897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}