The Queens Royals played their best defensive game against the best team they've played all season, Royals coach Wes Long said after Queens' 70-56 victory over King (Tenn.) College on Saturday afternoon at the Grady Cole Center.

Senior forward Daniel Bailey scored 21 points and pulled down 8 rebounds for the Royals (16-7, 11-2), who pulled away in the second half of this matchup of the two division leaders in Conference Carolinas.

Antonio Stabler added 18 points and 5 rebounds for Queens. The Royals handed the Tornado (20-5, 12-1) its first-ever loss in Conference Carolinas play. Freshman guard Logan Lyle led King, which joined the conference along with North Greenville last summer, with 20 points.

"I haven't been this proud defensively of our team since last season," said Long, who saw his Queens team go on a 16-4 run which spanned the two halves.

On the other end of the court, they bottled up one of the best three-point shooting teams in NCAA Division II.

"They (King) have four players who shoot over 40 percent (on three-pointers), and they take 30 three-pointers a game," Long said. King hit just 5 of their 21 attempts from beyond the arc, about half their average of makes.

The Royals limited the Tornado's leading scorer, senior guard Brian Hewitt, to four points.

He averages more than 16.

On the other end, Queens was solid, if not spectacular, in its shooting from the field, hitting 50 percent (24 of 48).

But Long said that the important thing on this night was not his teams shooting percentage, but what kind of shots it hit.

"We took high percentage shots and didn't settle for the quick ones," Long said. "You win games by taking great shots and hitting them."

It took a little while for the Royals to pull away from the Tornado, and they held onto what Long called a deceptively slim 28-26 lead after a back-and-forth first half.

"I think there was a lot of misplaced frustration by our guys at the half, that they were only leading by two points, and I told them that," Long said. "We're playing a very good team and if we had been up by 20 I would've been surprised. You're not going to make every shot."

The Royals continued a run which had closed the first half and took a 41-30 lead on a Bailey jump shot with 13 minutes and 50 seconds left in the game. King couldn't get any closer than six after that.

Long said the win was big for the Royals' long-range picture going into the last few weeks of the season.

"We're a bubble team (for the Division II tournament)," he said, "so it was good for us to play in an environment where we felt like we had to win."