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UC Irvine men’s basketball coach Russell Turner admitted he tried to unnerve Oregon freshman Louis King by repeatedly calling him “Queen” during his team’s NCAA Tournament loss in San Jose on Sunday.
While Turner laughed it off in a postgame press conference as simply a ploy to help his team, that’s not how some saw it.
Turner, who spent six years as a Warriors assistant after four years as a Stanford aide, is facing heavy criticism for what some believe was nothing more than homophobic and sexist taunts toward an opponent.
Here is the video of UC Irvine head coach Russ Turner explaining his reasoning for calling Oregon freshman Louis King "Louis Queen" during the game. pic.twitter.com/2xGnCsYyWa
— Matt Prehm (@MattPrehm) March 25, 2019
Anthony Nicodemo, an openly gay basketball coach in Yonkers, N.Y., was among the most vocal and said Turner needs to publicly apologize.
“I have to wonder what (Turner) is thinking,” Nicodemo said on Twitter. “Attacking a player’s masculinity is unacceptable. As leaders, we are supposed to know better. You owe Louis King and the LGBT community an apology.”
Turner matter-of-factly explained baiting King was just a game. A chess game, if you will.
“I was saying, ‘Double team Queen,’ to try to see if I could irrirate (King), and I did,” Turner told the media afterward at SAP Center. “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, starting thinking about me …”
Whether Turner’s taunts affected him or not, King scored only three points on 1-of-4 shooting during the first half. But, King came out and scored 13 second-half points to help lead the Ducks to a lopsided 73-54 victory.
“(King) came back and finished the game really strong,” Turner noted. “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.”
Nonetheless, the controversy surrounding his name-calling has put a damper on what was otherwise the most successful of Turner’s nine seasons with Anteaters. He set a record for most wins while going 31-6 and winning the Big West Conference title for the third time.
Turner’s name will surely be mentioned for high-profile openings — including Cal’s — so it remains to be seen if what happened Sunday will factor into his chances.
