It’s one thing to try it, it’s another to admit it was part of your game plan all along — after it was wildly unsuccessful.
During Sunday’s NCAA Tournament second-round showdown, UC Irvine coach Russell Turner said that he and his players resorted to calling Oregon freshman forward Louis King “Queen” to throw him off his game.
The baiting did not work, as King scored 16 points in the Ducks’ 73-54 win to secure a spot in the Sweet 16.
King and Turner appeared to share some words in the handshake line after the game, which Turner was happy to explain.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you,” Turner told reporters in his postgame press conference. “I was saying ‘double team Queen’ to try to see if I could irritate him. And I did. And I kept talking to my team about what we wanted to do. We were calling him ‘Queen’ because I knew it might irritate him, because of how important he is to their team, the queen in chess. It was a play on his name of King.
“And it bothered him, started thinking about me, started thinking about Max [Hazzard, UC Irvine’s guard]. But he came back and finished the game really strong. And he’d had a thing or two to say to me during the game, and I wanted to let him know that what I’d done was out of respect.”
King can keep dancing while Turner figures out his next name-calling bit.
