It’s one thing to try it, it’s another to 𒐪admit 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 an𒉰d 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 keepಞ dancing while Turner figures out his next name-calling bit.