Queens basketball can’t make the NCAA Tournament. So why are these guys playing so hard?
The men’s basketball team at Queens might be good enough to actually make the NCAA Tournament this season — if only it were eligible to do so.
The small university tucked into Charlotte’s Myers Park neighborhood moved up from Division II to Division I in the summer of 2022, and right after that took its place in purgatory. Although it became a member of the Atlantic Sun conference as part of its reclassification, Queens knew it would have to wait for four years to participate in any official NCAA championships.
Thus, in terms of basketball, that meant no March Madness. No NIT either.
But there are two pieces of good news. The first is that the four-year purgatory looks like it’s going to end one year early. It’s not official yet, but it’s likely. As long as it meets the relevant academic metrics, Queens University of Charlotte should be eligible for March Madness and all the other NCAA championships for the 2025-26 school year.
The second? Queens has a good basketball team already, one that is just a game out of first place in the 12-team Atlantic Sun even after Thursday night’s 90-81 loss to North Florida. The Royals have a shot at winning a conference regular-season or tournament championship.
Grant Leonard, Queens’ 43-year-old head coach, had a hardscrabble existence on the fringes of college basketball for the first decade of his career. He owned a white 1999 Ford F-150 truck, and as he moved from one Division III or Division II team to another, he loaded his life into that pickup and drove away. Anything that didn’t fit was left behind.
But 12 years ago Leonard was hired at Queens, first as an assistant coach under Bart Lundy. Then, after Lundy left to coach at Milwaukee, Leonard was promoted to head coach just as the Royals made the move to Division I.
“I look at this as an opportunity to build a power like Bob McKillop built at Davidson,” Leonard said, “when they were running the Southern Conference for a long time. And I think that Queens could do that here in the ASUN.”
Under Lundy, Queens was a Division II powerhouse. The Royals never won a Division II national championship (unlike the Queens swim teams, which have earned a bushelful). But Queens won 30 or more games four times in six years and often advanced deep into the Division II tournament.
But Division I is a whole different game. In its first two years of D-I men’s basketball, Queens was a middle-of-the-pack team that went 32-34 over two seasons.
This year’s team has a 12-8 record. Queens is 5-2 in the ASUN conference, which everyone understands is a one-bid league. Queens still could technically win the conference tournament, but in that case, the second-place ASUN team would go.
“This year’s team had very realistic goals,” Leonard said. “We wanted to get to 20 wins, and I think we’re on track for that. They wanted to host a game in the conference tournament which means finishing in the top four in the league. We’re on track for that. And we wanted to see if we could play for a conference championship. All those things are attainable.”
This year’s team is led by Leo Colimerio, a graduate student who played at Fresno State and is on a one-and-done year at Queens. Colimerio, who’s originally from Brazil, first thought when he got a call from “Queens” that it was somewhere else entirely.
“I thought we were talking about New York,” said Colimerio, a forward who is the team’s leading scorer. Colimerio became smitten with Charlotte, however, and decided to spend a year in the Queen City. He also was a fan of the team’s pace of play.
Said Colimerio: “I came from a school that when you cross halfcourt, we had to look at the coach, who calls a play. … So coming here was something that I was not used to at first. It’s pretty amazing how fast we play.”
For a school that is one of the smallest by enrollment in Division I (Queens’ undergraduate enrollment is under 2,000 students), the Royals are quite tall on the court. Seven-foot center Malcolm Wilson — “The Great Wall of Malcolm,” they call him — is among the national leaders in blocks and had five of them Thursday night. Point guard Bryce Cash, a local guy who went to Carmel Christian, is 6-5. Colimerio is a willowy 6-7 who also played some point guard Thursday.
In terms of the accessories of big-time college basketball, Queens doesn’t have a lot of them.
They do have a third-party NIL collective for men’s basketball, but it’s small-scale. Their on-campus gym officially seats 2,500, but the actual attendance Thursday night was 796. And they all know that when the NCAA Tournament begins this year, they will be only watching it on TV.
But they’ve made their peace with it.
“At the end of the day, it’s basketball,” said Cash, the point guard. “So if you love the sport, then you’re going to wake up and play, regardless whether you’re playing in a tournament or for a conference championship.”
And it seems like the program is gaining some momentum. There is a player in Lancaster, S.C., named Jordan Watford — a guard who is ranked by many as the No. 1 player in South Carolina. He’s also a national Top-100 recruit. You know where he has signed to play next season?
Queens.
