March Madness: UC Irvine coach heckles Oregon player with 'queen' nickname

March 25 (UPI) -- UC Irvine coach Russell Turner referred to Oregon's Louis King as "queen," trying to irritate him during a loss to the Ducks in the NCAA tournament.

The Anteaters' coach spoke about the tactic following the 73-54 setback in the second round Sunday at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif. No. 12 Oregon battles No. 1 Virginia in the Sweet 16 on Thursday in Louisville.

"I was saying 'double-team Queen' to try to see if I could irritate him, and I did," Turner told reporters. "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. A queen in chess. It was a play on his name of King. It bothered him. He started thinking about me. He started thinking about Max."

Turner spoke to King in the handshake line after the game. The Oregon freshman and UC Irvine coach exchanged words several times during the game.

"I wanted to let him know that what I had done was out of respect," Turner said.

King scored 16 points and had four rebounds for the Ducks. Robert Cartwright led UC Irvine with 14 points in the loss. Payton Pritchard led all scorers with 18 points while dishing out seven assists for the Ducks.

King averaged 13.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game this season for Oregon.