Of all the games Pop coached, though, the stakes never felt higher than when P-P played Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, the other team at the Claremont Colleges, which practices and plays just across Sixth Street — less than a quarter mile away. “That rivalry has been bigger to me than any rivalry I’ve had in the NBA,” he said. “It’s not even close. Winning or losing to Claremont McKenna was like life and death. If we won, you’re high forever. If you lost, you wanted to jump off the building.” “It was just the most intense nervousness and anxiety I’ve had in my body athletically when we played them,” he added. “Nothing like it.”