Jen Brown's Queens Royals find themselves in the thick of the conference tournament race. Queens sits a half game behind UVA Wise for eighth place in the South Atlantic Conference. The top eight teams in the final standings will qualify for postseason play and reaching the tournament would be a success for Brown's bunch. A year ago, the Royals won just one league game as part of a 1-19 season but have shown vast improvement this winter. Kalaya Hall ranks fourth in the SAC in scoring at 18.1 points per night while Taylor Stevens leads in assists at 4.4 per game. Meanwhile, Mercer University transfer Kiana Barkhoff's 3.82 blocked shots per contest lead the league. Queens needs three more conference wins to match the six won by the 2014 team for the most for the program in the last nine seasons.

Behind senior Meg Crawford, UVA Wise halted its losing skid with a 72-70 win at Lenoir-Rhyne Wednesday. The 6-foot-3 center tallied a season-high 20 points while matching a career-high with 10 made field goals. Crawford's strong inside play galvanized an offensive effort that saw the Cavaliers shoot a season-best 56.3 percent from the floor. Jamie Cluesman's crew scored 36 points in the paint and received a breakout performance from freshman Katlin Burger. Burger went 4-of-5 from the floor, sank all four of her free throw attempts and netted a season-high 12 points in 19 minutes of action. Nia Vanzant scored in double figures for the 50th time of her career and the 14th time this season with 15 points while Kalee Johnson canned a pair of 3-pointers to reach 100 made 3-pointers for her career. Johnson is a player to watch Saturday; in last year's conference tournament win over the Royals the forward scored 30 points and grabbed 17 rebounds.