The Queens University of Charlotte men’s basketball team celebrates while viewing the NCAA selection show on CBS on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at Curry Arena. They are a No. 15 seed and will play Purdue.
A week ago, the Queens Royals muscled through an emotional overtime win that stamped their ticket to the NCAA Tournament and launched them into the greater college basketball consciousness.
Since then, it’s all been gravy.
Even when Queens’ opponent came to the fore on Sunday.
The Queens University of Charlotte men’s basketball team learned Sunday evening that it would be a No. 15 seed and play No. 2-seeded Purdue in St. Louis in the first round of March Madness. The game is set for Friday; tip-off time is to be announced.
The players and coaches received the news just like the rest of us did, via the CBS Selection Show, the television program that sets the bracket for the NCAA Tournament each year. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when they learned they weren’t the No. 16 team tasked with taking on overall No. 1 seed Duke, and they are clearly embracing the matchup with Purdue, the Big 10 Tournament champion.
The Royals were surrounded by the hundreds of people who descended on the campus in Charlotte to celebrate the team reaching its NCAA Tournament dreams — including several of the school’s top officials, many of whom know just how far the program has come in such a short amount of time.
“It really does take a village,” Queens head coach Grant Leonard told the crowd on-hand in the Levine Center, referencing the fans as well as the athletic department’s support staff. “Go Royals!”
At a glance, it might look like Queens didn’t break much of a sweat getting to Sunday’s moment. You’d be wrong — but you’d also be forgiven.
The program, after all, earned its first NCAA Tournament berth as soon it was eligible to do so, in its fourth year as a Division I basketball program. Originally, the school, which made the leap up from Division II dominance in 2023, wasn’t allowed to earn berths in any end-of-season NCAA Tournaments until it served a four-year mandated transition phase. In other words, the basketball program couldn’t partake in March Madness even if it won the ASUN through the 2026-27 season.
Then, in June 2025, Queens University of Charlotte announced it had received full NCAA Division I status after just three years following the Division I Council’s vote in January that shortened the reclassification period for schools going D1. Postseason eligibility, thus, began this fall.
And although the Royals didn’t win the conference tournament in their first three years, there was still no D2-to-D1 precarity. Queens belonged immediately. The program proved so in its first men’s basketball game as a Division I school, in fact, defeating Marshall by one point on its home floor — the night’s delirium nearly bursting the roof off the school’s small gym, on its quaint campus, in Charlotte’s tranquil tree-lined neighborhood of Myers Park.
Queens found more victories over the years. Especially this year. There was a massive triumph before the year even began, in fact, when the program landed Jordan Watford, the No. 1-ranked recruit in all of South Carolina. Watford, a 6-foot-5, 185-pound freshman, arrived by way of Lancaster High School and averages 11.9 points and 3.8 assists per game — and does so, even, despite coming off the bench, a flex of the team’s depth.
There were plenty other wins in 2025-26 as well. The team went 18-13 (10-5 ASUN) through the regular season, clinching its third winning season in four years. And then came a run through the ASUN Tournament that featured two drama-free wins and then the most important victory of all — a 98-93 overtime thriller over top-seeded Central Arkansas.
That all led to Selection Sunday, with the coaches capturing the spectacle on their phones; with community members who’d been tailgating since 3:30 p.m. waiving pom-poms; with players dressed in gray jumpsuits and their hooping shoes, ready to keep living a dream, one that was realized quickly, maybe, but not easily.
This story will be updated.
This story was originally published March 15, 2026 at 6:26 PM.
The Charlotte Observer
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