Mark Pope won't give a Jayden Quaintance health update because he destroyed him in chess

How is Jayden Quaintance‘s recovery going in Lexington after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ACL back in March? Mark Pope doesn’t want to talk about it — or anything to do with the prized transfer portal addition, for that matter.

No, it’s not because he has bad news to share. Things are clearly going well if he’s suited up and putting in work to open summer workouts for the Wildcats just three months removed from going under the knife. If anything, they’re going better than anticipated.

Pope just doesn’t want to talk about him because he got his butt kicked in chess, Quaintance winning two of three games to win the match.

In a question about the Arizona State transfer’s push toward basketball activities and what he’s able to do on the floor, Pope joked with reporters at Kentucky’s satellite camp in Laurel County to keep it moving.

“I don’t want to talk about Jayden Quaintance — he just beat me in a game of chess in like seven minutes. I am done with him, okay?” he said. “He beat me the first time we played. I came back and got him, and then we had a rubber match, and he destroyed me. So I have nothing good to say about Jayden Quaintance. Next question.”

Back in May, Pope said the program was going to be cautious with the former five-star recruit — who told KSR after his commitment the goal was to “get back around September.” The head coach hasn’t been ready to go that far, not even committing to the Louisville game on November 11, but said the reward will be worth the wait.

“Talk about a beautiful young person, man. He’s a young — really young, actually. When I say young person, he’s really young, but he’s a beautiful kid. I mean, Big Blue Nation is going to fall in love with Jayden Quaintance. He just is. He fits on our roster. He’s just a really special person,” Pope said. “… The one thing I know about him, he’s an incredible talent and we’re going to go as fast as we can with the absolute most caution that we can.

“He’s working really hard. He’s making tremendous progress right now. … We’re gonna race back to 100 percent health as fast as we can.”

Our first look at Jayden Quaintance getting buckets and blocking shots at Kentucky

(Kind of) pic.twitter.com/srFfoS7X4p

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) June 7, 2025

It’s clear he’s comfortable talking about Quaintance and his health — just not when he destroys him at board games.

That conversation transitioned into a lot of chess talk, Pope asked about Collin Chandler’s anticipated best-of-seven finale we heard about back in January. At the time, the head coach said the then-freshman had him ‘terrified’ to finish the match. He was also thinking of ways to turn the head-to-head into a pay-per-view with NIL dollars on the line.

“I’m ducking him. I’m terrified,” Pope said at the time. “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.”

Now, Pope says Chandler is the one afraid of competing in chess — not the other way around. That PPV is still on the table, though.

“Collin’s been ducking us, man. I think Collin’s a little nervous. I know he’s not nervous, he never gets nervous, but we’re starting to develop a little culture on this team. It’s gonna get competitive,” Pope said. “We might do — for Big Blue Madness, maybe before we do a little (match). I don’t know, we’re gonna figure something out.”

Chandler was asked for his take on the controversy, and not only did he deny the ducking allegations, he said he had the texts to prove Pope was holding out on the matchup.

He’s ready for the rematch whenever his head coach comes out of hiding — and Quaintance can join them, if he wants the smoke, too.

“Say what? Oh my goodness, that’s a big lie,” Chandler said. “I can get that on record, I have a text I sent him that I was just moving into my house and I got sent a chess board. I sent him a text and it took him like a week to reply for a chess challenge. I haven’t played Jayden yet, but I’ll have him over and I’ll let you guys know. Next time you see me, ask how it went with Jayden.”

For now, it’s just those three, but maybe it turns into something bigger over the next few months with the new group?

“I think we’re the only two that really play besides Coach, but we’ll see. Maybe we’ve got some more guys that just aren’t as vocal about it,” Chandler continued.

Pope’s got some explaining to do.