It took a while for the Anderson express to get up to full speed Friday, but once it did, the Queens Lady Royals were left with some serious track marks.

After struggling with their shooting in the early going — and trailing by as many as seven points in the first half — the Lady Trojans took complete control in the second stanza and ran away with an 81-53 decision at the Abney Center. Queens managed just nine points over the first 15 minutes of the final half, and by then Anderson had taken a 66-39 lead.

The hosts led just 34-31 at the break.

“I felt like we had a lot of jitters early on,” Lady Trojans coach Jeff Dow said. “We were missing some shots that are out of character for us, but give Queens credit. They played very hard.”

Despite its shooting woes, Anderson still managed to surge ahead in the first half, taking its first lead of the night at the 4:39 mark. The Lady Royals were starting to feel the sting of the Anderson defense at that point, and never recovered.

“We always hang our hat on defense,” Dow said. “When you play good defense you can work through some of the things we had to work through. And then in the second half we just turned it up another notch.”

In winning its 18th consecutive game — and improving to 25-2 overall and 19-1 in Conference Carolinas play — the Lady Trojans again showed great balance. Freshman Alexa Neal led the way with a game-high 16 points, 12 of them coming beyond the ark.

Nikki Anthony, Mikala Fogle-Wilson and Keana Boyd each chipped in 15 points.

Anthony, whose 11 rebounds marked her 14th double-double of the season, tallied 11 of her points at the free throw line as Queens opted to give her the “Hack-A-Shaq” treatment.

“That’s not surprising,” Dow said. “We knew it would be physical. The good part about that, though, is when they go after Nikki it opens up our guard play, and that’s what happened tonight.”

Anderson dominated the boards by a 49-32 margin and shot 46 percent from both field goal and 3-point range.

The winners also got a spark from Latrice Thomas, who scored nine points and grabbed six rebounds in 28 minutes of action.

“In the first half our shots just didn’t fall, so we had to make up for it by playing really good defense,” Thomas said. “And then in the second half we had good offense to go with our defense. We knew we had to stay focused tonight because when we played them earlier (in Charlotte) we just won by 2, and we didn’t want to end our streak.”

By winning the Conference Carolinas regular season title, Anderson will attempt to make it 19 in a row Monday when Lees-McRae comes to Abney Center for a 7 p.m. tip-off. Since the higher seeded team hosts each game of the tourney, the Lady Trojans could conceivably play three home games next week.

The semifinals are set for Thursday and the championship will be played on Saturday.

“We’d love to get three more here and win three more,” Dow said. “That was our goal from the beginning.”