Mark Pope is a brilliant basketball mind, a former NBA player, and the head coach of Kentucky. And we all know he almost graduated medical school. He talks about parts of the brain, he waxes philosophically. But in the chess world, he’s getting absolutely humbled by his 6'10 phenom, Jayden Quaintance.
"This JQ is just crushing me"
During his media availability, Pope laughingly admitted his struggles against the 6-foot-9 phenom.
“This JQ is just crushing me in chess,” Pope confessed. “It's like it's I I've just lost all pride.”
The "rivalry" apparently got so one-sided that Pope had to recruit a teammate, Colin Chandler, just to stand a chance—and it still wasn't a fair fight.
The 2-on-1 beatdown
“CBS came and wanted to video me and JQ playing chess. I'm like, 'Nope, I'm not doing that,'” Pope joked. “So it was me and Colin Chandler, two boards, JQ on the other side of the table, and he had to go from board to board to board to board, alternating every move. And um and he was on a two-minute timer. Colin and I had a composite nine hours. It's true story.”
The result? “One of us on my side, was was out in checkmate in like 11 moves,” Pope admitted. “Fortunately, enough damage had been done on the other board that we came away with a split with JQ.”
It took two to only split the game.
A humble plea to Big Blue Nation
The experience has been so "humbling" that Pope joked he's ready to crowdsource a strategy from the fanbase.
“I'm going to maybe, what I'm going to do is start a game with JQ,” he said. “I'm going to post each move and see if I can get feedback from BBN to help me along the way.”
Get those chess boards out folks, let's help Pope figure it out.
Drew Holbrook is an avid Kentucky fan who has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion