UC Irvine Coach Says He Called Oregon's Louis King "Queen" To Rattle Him But Also Because Of Chess?

UC Irvine head coach Russell Turner gave a peek behind his coaching strategy after the Anteaters’ 73-54 loss to Oregon in Sunday’s second-round game, and he inadvertently revealed that he’s as creative as a Facebook denizen who loves sports meme pages and calls the Dallas Cowboys the “Cowgirls.”

Part of UC Irvine’s tactics to get in the head of Ducks forward Louis King, Turner explained, was to call the 19-year-old “Queen.” The coach also invoked chess to try and lay out the rationale for doing this:

Here’s a transcript:

I was saying, “Double team Queen,” to try to see if I could irritate [King], 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]. But he came back and finished the game really strong. 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.”

Huh, okay. That’s a weird tactic to try, and also it didn’t work that well because King shot 5-for-10 from the field as the Anteaters lost by 19. Maybe Turner can schedule a lunch with Tom Izzo after the tournament’s over and brainstorm more effective ways to make freshmen feel like shit.

H/t to PL