![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26080062159433-678x381.jpg\" "\\"NCAA")
\nQueens University’s Yoav Berman (24) heads to the basket against Purdue in the first round of the NCAA tournament. (Ali Overstreet \/ AP Photo)<\/p>\n
\nQueens University’s Yoav Berman (24) heads to the basket against Purdue in the first round of the NCAA tournament. (Ali Overstreet \/ AP Photo)<\/p>\n
Five North Carolina based teams qualified for the 2026 men\u2019s NCAA Tournament, but after the first round of action, only two remain.<\/p>\n
Two of the teams that failed to advance past their first game were the NC State Wolfpack and the Queens University of Charlotte Royals.<\/p>\n
NC State was one of the last programs to even qualify for the tournament, as their resume fell apart with seven losses in their final nine games, and so they wound up playing in Dayton in the First Four.<\/p>\n
Their rematch with Texas wound up closer than the first game, but the result was the same in the end as the Wolfpack saw their season end in a 68-66 loss.<\/p>\n
NC State did battle back from multiple double-digit deficits and even tied the game on a late run with just 18 seconds remaining, but the Longhorns nailed a difficult jumper in the final seconds of the game to advance.<\/p>\n
\u201cA disappointing end to a pretty disappointing season for us,\u201d Wade said after the game. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been very good in close games, we hadn\u2019t earned the right to win close games, and our season ended very similarly to the reason why we\u2019re sitting in Dayton. You are who you are in pressure moments and we tried to mask some stuff and we couldn\u2019t do it. That\u2019s why we were here and that\u2019s why we\u2019re heading home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the bold claims by new coach Will Wade of a return to form for NC State and a \u201cRed Reckoning,\u201d the team was pretty disappointing throughout the year.<\/p>\n
They had their moments, but overall, the group suffered too much from inconsistent play, poor defense and a quite notable size problem in the front court, which all proved way too much to overcome.<\/p>\n
But while this year was a flop, it did paint a better picture of what Wade will need to improve on for Year 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things we have to reset for next year,\u201d Wade said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the year we wanted to have and we have a lot of things that we have to make sure we\u2019re in better shape for moving forward. We\u2019re gonna be better. We put this together pretty quickly. We didn\u2019t spend as much time on a couple things and just looked at some analytics. The personalities and some of that stuff is very, very important and we\u2019re gonna do much more due diligence this year and we\u2019ll have a better mixture of things moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the end of year emotions for NC State are nearly all negative, there\u2019s quite a different feeling for Queens University.<\/p>\n
Despite the first round loss, it\u2019s clear that the Royals had a season to be proud of.<\/p>\n
The ASUN conference champions immediately qualified for the tourney in their first eligible year \u2014 Queens made the jump to Division I in 2022, which came with a four-year probationary period from NCAA Tournament eligibility \u2014 becoming just the fifth school since 1972 to accomplish that feat.<\/p>\n
The program has seen steady improvement each and every year under coach Grant Leonard and their first DI NCAA Tournament bid was well earned as they finished the season with a 13-5 conference record (third best) and beat both the No. 1 and 2 ranked teams en route to their first conference title.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally proud of our team, our school, our community and all that we accomplished this year and how we represented the entire institution, the Atlantic SUN and everything that we did,\u2019 Leonard said. \u201cIt was an unbelievable season. Usually only one team ends happy, but our guys can hang their heads high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with the strong year, the Royals were simply outclassed in their first-round matchup, losing 104-71 to the Purdue Boilermakers.<\/p>\n
Purdue entered the tournament as the AP\u2019s eighth overall ranked team and they\u2019ve long been one of college basketball\u2019s elite programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a reason why they were preseason number one,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cThey\u2019re pretty dang good. They played fantastic, thought the offensive rebounding really broke us in the second half, broke the game open for them and then the second-chance 3s kind of put it over the top.\u201d<\/p>\n
But now that Queens has gotten its first taste of NCAA Tournament action, the goal is to get right back to it next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you go, you want to go back,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cBut the thing is, we\u2019ve been a part of a lot of winning here at Queens and now everyone is going to be chasing you. You\u2019ve got a big target on your back and the amount of work that has to be put in to stay there is more than you put in to get there. But our guys will be ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens University’s Yoav Berman (24) heads to the basket against Purdue in the first round of the NCAA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-180456","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\/180456","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=180456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}