From NBA to UCI

IRVINE — If members and supporters of the UC Irvine men’s basketball program think they are tired of losing, they have nothing on the program’s new head coach.

Russ Turner, introduced Friday as the seventh coach in the relatively uneventful 45-year history of the UCI program, said he is extremely motivated to create success with the Anteaters.

Part of that motivation, he said, comes from the frustration forged by his six seasons as an NBA assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors.

Turner, who spent four seasons as an assistant at Stanford and six more in the same role at Wake Forest, said he will finish out the season with the Warriors, who take a 24-54 record into tonight’s road game against the Los Angeles Clippers.

“I love the NBA and I will never say a negative thing about the NBA,” Turner said in front of a gathering of media at UCI’s Newkirk Pavilion. “But I haven’t loved these last two years we’ve gotten beaten so often. I told the people that interviewed me that they’re going to get a motivated guy. I’m motivated to succeed.”

Turner, 39, a two-time All-American as a 6-foot-7 center and the school’s all-time leading scorer at NCAA Division III Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, signed a five-year contract with an annual base salary of $205,000.

He replaces Pat Douglass, who was let go after 13 seasons, including a 14-18 campaign in 2009-10 in which the Anteaters finished eighth in the nine-team conference and lost in the first round of the Big West Conference Tournament.

Since Douglass guided UCI to three straight 20-win seasons from 2000 to 2003, including two conference regular-season titles and two trips to the NIT, the ’Eaters are a combined 102-114 the last six seasons.

They reached the conference tournament title game in 2008, but have not yet been to the NCAA Tournament since joining the Division I ranks before the 1977-78 season.

“That’s the goal,” Turner said of making the NCAA Tournament. “That’s what I told the players [Friday], that we need to be focused every day to know what we have to do to win the Big West Tournament and make it to the NCAAs. That’s what everyone around here wants and that’s what this school and this community needs. We all want to make UCI basketball relevant in Orange County. The way to do that is to have success. How quickly we can do that, I don’t know, but that’s what I’m going to work every day through every last minute of my contract trying to do.”

Turner said the high academic standards at UCI, which Douglass and others cited as obstacles to recruiting, are no different than those he encountered working at Wake Forest and Stanford.

“I don’t see any obstacles as overwhelming,” Turner said. “You’ve got to recruit players who fit your university. At Wake Forest and Stanford, we were able to do that. Both of those jobs had been difficult jobs in the past and both of the [head coaches] I was with made them into recruitable situations.”

Turner avoided specific short-term goals or a timetable for success, but said he would try to bring Golden State’s up-tempo style of play to UCI.

“The key to playing winning basketball is that your offensive style and your defensive style fit your personnel,” Turner said. “I’ve got to make that happen. Exactly how that happens, right now, is still somewhat to be determined.”

Turner said his association with Nelson, whose 1,333rd victory Wednesday made him No. 1 on the NBA’s all-time list, has been invaluable in his development as a coach. He also credited Mike Montgomery, with whom he worked at Stanford and followed to Golden State, with honing his coaching skills.

“My master’s [degree] is in basketball, Turner said. “I’m proud of that and I want to put the work I’ve done and the things I’ve learned into effect here at UCI. I’ve said before that you can’t go through the games and the experiences I’ve had and not learn a lot if you’ve been paying attention. And I’ve been paying attention.

“Our team is going to compete, going to be unselfish, unified and organized,” Turner said. Turner said he had not yet begun work on assembling a staff. He also said that his association with UCI Athletic Director Mike Izzi, who was an associate athletic director at Stanford during his time there, helped him get the UCI job.

“Mike and I worked together at Stanford and we worked well together,” Turner said. “The most important thing about that relationship is that he has seen me work and he has confidence in me to be successful.

“I’ve heard him talk for a number of years about how great things are [at UCI] and I’ve only recently come to see how true the things he has been telling me are.”