Mark Pope says his four daughters might fight and yell but they draw strength and power from each other. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Just when you think Mark Pope cannot do anything else to show just how different he is as a coach, he does it.
While freshman guard Collin Chandler has yet to play a big role on the court this season, the SEC Network revealed during UK’s win over Texas A&M that Pope has a UK-themed chess board in his office and likes to play against his players. However, it appears Chandler might be the better chess player as he is 3-3 against Pope and the coach is in no hurry to play him again.
“I’m ducking him. I’m terrified,” Pope said Thursday at his press conference. “Collin is good because he kind of lets you control the board and all of a sudden you’re like ‘Uh oh. This went really, really bad really, really fast.’
“I don’t like it at all. So I’m gonna try to juice this thing and eventually do a pay-per-view, some kind of NIL pay-per-view for game seven. But I got to work on the marketing there. We got to figure that out.”
Not sure even BBN might be up for pay-for-view chess, but if anyone can make it happen it would be Pope.
“I think it’s massively important,” Pope said. “I think it’s more important that our players are doing non-basketball things with each other.
“I believe that for a team to become everything, to have all the synergy that you can have — and I’m using that word very specifically, the definition of that word matters — to really have the most impact of the synergy of guys together on a team, that comes from a place of love,” Pope said. “It does. I know that sounds soft, but it’s real.
“Like that is a real thing. And love is a two-part word. Love is an affection that you feel for someone, but it’s also a verb. It’s an active endeavor. It’s both. It’s a noun and a verb, and they’re both real. And you kind of flip back and forth between the two.”
“I think it’s massively important,” Pope said. “I think it’s more important that our players are doing non-basketball things with each other.
Pope has made it clear he thinks teams function better when players care about each other
“That’s a real thing. It’s why I love team sports. It’s why I love team organizations. It’s why I love a (coaching) staff. It’s why I love looking at companies that actually function at a high level. It’s why I love looking at families,” Pope said. “There’s nowhere you see it better than in families. It’s why I love watching my four girls.”
He said his four daughters interact with each other because they get “power and strength” from each other.
“They’ll yell and scream and fight and punch and claw, and heaven forbid Layla comes to visit, and she goes home to Utah with Shay’s shirt, and then it’s like we’re gonna spend the next three weeks until she comes back, and everybody’s mad at each other, right?” the Kentucky coach said. “But from all of that, this active verb of love and this real love, that’s where all the synergy comes from, right?”
That got Pope to the main point of why something as simple as playing chess against Chandler is important.
“So I think you get that from spending time together, doing stupid things, knowing each other, caring enough to not just sit in your room by yourself, but ‘Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna actually extend myself,’” the Kentucky coach said.
“And so I’m a huge believer, and thankfully, because it’s no fun to do this by yourself, right? And so I think those things really matter. That was a long answer, but I care about it. I really care about that. I think it’s important in life.”
