Alex Oriakhi is having a bad week. Earlier today the junior center ended a disappointing showing in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament by playing just 10 minutes in UConn's game against Florida St. in which he recorded no points, no rebounds and three fouls. Oriakhi was coming off his best game of the season -- in a losing effort against Central Florida -- but two days earlier he was benched prior to UConn's game with UNC-Asheville and lashed out at head coach Jim Calhoun on twitter, calling the benching "bs."
After today's game Oriakhi took to twitter again, responding to a comment about Calhoun and seemingly saying that the coach is a "mumu" -- a Nigerian slang term for idiot. You can see other, less reliable references here and here (see definition 3).
This is a little different than Oriakhi calling Calhoun's decision to bench him "bs," if only because online translations of nigerian slang don't exactly provide a lot of contex, but it is worth nothing that both of Oriakhi's parents are Nigerian.
It's fine for Oriakhi to be frustrated, I would be frustrated too if I was in his position right now. What's not fine is for one of the team's co-captains to be repeatedly criticizing the head coach in a public forum. At best it shows poor judgment and at worst it is a sign of larger troubles brewing within the team.
STUPID TWITTER THINGS UPDATE: Some UConn fans have felt the need to personally criticize Oriakhi on twitter. This is extremely dumb. If people think he's struggling that's fine, but going to him directly is stupid. But that's not news on it's own. What is sort of news-y is that Oriakhi is responding with answers like " pls shut up," "u sound stupid foreal" and "u sound stupid too." Look, it's fine Oriakhi has a twitter, and yeah, he can say what he wants, but he's got over 10,000 followers (including us, obviously), and what he says reflects on the university and his team. He has a very public platform and he needs to be careful about how he uses it.
UPDATE TWO: Oriakhi has tweeted: "Where I'm frm n Nigeria mum means boss." As someone noted in the comments there are over 250 languages in Nigeria, so this could well be true. Just two brief notes from me: 1) With some quick googling I have not been able to find another source backing that definition. 2) Oriakhi's original tweet said Calhoun was "a" mumu, not "the" mumu, had he said the word "the" as in "Calhoun is the boss," it would make a world of difference right now.
UPDATE THREE: Oriakhi has deleted the original tweet from his twitter account.