Everything about Queens misleading as Royals have much in common with Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — There is no doubt Arkansas head coach John Calipari has an obsession with New York City and the region that surrounds it in a way that borders on former Razorbacks coach Eric Musselman's affinity for the West Coast.

He routinely forces his employeeing athletics programs to pay for him to visit the area on an annual basis as if it's some sort of life force that must be renewed at least once a year or he will become powerless and flake away with the wind.

This year the excuse is a game against Houston that is being played in Newark, New Jersey rather than the Cougars being the team the Hogs played in Dallas because that would have been too logical. For those who are geographically challenged, it's where many land to travel to New York City as it's a stone's throw away from the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn and Queens just West of the Big Apple.

So, it's only fitting that Calipari schedule Queens as a rare non-conference appearance at Bud Walton Arena as the lead-in to a game where the Hogs will travel over 1,300 miles to play a team that is just over 500 miles away to placate a New York obsession for their coach.

However, as Calipari may have realized at the time he scheduled them and certainly does now, the images Arkansas fans may have of young men fresh off the asphalt playground courts of New York filling the roster of Queens is entirely an assumed falsehood.

Queens is not from the New York City burough of Queens. Instead, it is a private school with way more in common with the people of Arkansas than the Big Apple.

For starters, they are the Queens Royals of Charlotte, as in, it's possible its founders in the 1850s were blessed with foresight and saw the arrival of wrestling royalty, Charlotte Flair, known as "The Queen" in her sport where she has risen to be an equal on the women's side to her dad Ric Flair.

This is all because Charlotte is known as the Queen City as it is named after Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, ruler of Britain and Ireland. Thus, when Flair's daughter Ashley decided to pursue the dream of her brother after he tragically died, she took on the name Charlotte in honor of where her father often claimed to reside as a wrestler and easily slid into the moniker of "The Queen," a direct reflection of how Queens University of Charlotte got its name also.

Arkansas fans can also directly relate better to this version of Queens as one of the four notable graduates is a man by the name of Jayson Alexander who is known as a driver for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. It's an odd path for someone to go from private school to a form of NASCAR driver, but considering how important the city of Charlotte is to NASCAR, it's not entirely impossible to imagine.

So, with it firmly established that this is a more Southern cultured Queens, it's time to know about the team itself. One more point of relativity to Arkansas is the Central Arkansas Bears compete against them in the ASUN Conference.

The biggest thing to understand beyond their 20-15 record last year with a key win over NCAA Tournament bound Lipscomb is the Royals are playing a much tougher schedule and have a highly identifiable trend as to how things are going to go.

Queens will depart Fayetteville with Auburn next up on the list at Auburn. They've already taken on Winthrop, Villanova, Virginia and Wake Forest.

It was just two days ago they were fighting the Demon Deacons in Winston-Salem. As for trends, it's pretty obvious.

If the Royals score over 100, which happens often, they are going to win. If they only manage to get in the 70 points range, they lose.

Arkansas is going to have to put up a rather large number tonight if they intend to come away with a victory. The good news for Razorbacks fans is, regardless of competition level, the Hogs have only failed to break beyond the 70's once this season in a 69-66 slugfest against Michigan State in East Lansing.

So, while it's not the Queens a lot of Arkansas fans may have been expecting, so long as the offense plays out the way it usually does, Razorbacks fans should at least get the win they were expecting.

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