For state men’s basketball teams, including two newly crowned conference champions, have been selected to play in the Division II NCAA tournament. The brackets for the 64-team field were announced on Sunday. Queens, fresh off its victory against Lincoln Memorial in the South Atlantic Conference tournament final, is the No. 1 seed in the Southeast Region while UNC Pembroke, which won its first ever Peach Belt Conference tournament crown on Sunday, is the region’s third seed. Pfeiffer and Wingate, which earned at large bids, are the No. 7 and 8 seeds in the Southeast. Play in the Division II will begin on Saturday, with Queens (28-3) hosting Wingate (20-10) in a rematch of last week’s SAC tournament semifinal, UNCP (24-7) at home against No. 6 Limestone (26-5) and Pfeiffer (26-4) traveling to No. 2 seed Lincoln Memorial (26-5). Like UNCP, Queens had never won its conference tournament title before this season. The Royals changed that on Sunday by getting a career-high 29 points from SAC tournament MVP Daniel Camps to hold on for a 75-72 win against Lincoln Memorial. Camps, a senior from Fayetteville, hit on 11 of his 17 shots in the championship game and Queens converted 16 turnovers into 18 points to win the rubber match between teams that split their regular season series by a combined total of four points. The Royals beat Anderson and Wingate to advance to Sunday’s final in Greenville, S.C. Just down the road in Greenwood, S.C., UNCP rallied in the second half to score an 89-77 victory against Columbus State in the Peach Belt title game. It was the Braves’ 10th straight win. Brandon Watts, a junior from Wesley Chapel, scored 14 of his 18 points over the final 20 minutes, in which UNCP overcame a five-point halftime deficit by outscoring their opponent 48-31. Akia Pruitt, a freshman from Winston-Salem, added 15 points to earn the tournament’s MVP award. The Braves defeated North Georgia and Lander to advance to the final. In the Division III bracket, Guilford saw its season come to an end on Saturday with an 88-64 loss at Marietta on Saturday. The Quakers, who finished with a 24-6 record, advanced to that game with a first round victory against Thomas Moore. They qualified for the D3 tournament by winning the Old Dominion Athletic Conference tournament the previous weekend.
