{"id":444248,"date":"2026-11-01T12:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/444248\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:32:10","slug":"villanova-notre-dame-open-college-basketball-season-following-papal-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/444248\/","title":{"rendered":"Villanova, Notre Dame open college basketball season following papal audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Associated<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been blessed by the pope. And now it\u2019s finally time for some hoops.<\/p>\n

The Villanova and Notre Dame men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams are meeting in a doubleheader in Rome on Sunday to open the college basketball season.<\/p>\n

The event, dubbed the Eternal City Tip-Off, was created to honor the first American pope.<\/p>\n

Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV received all four teams in an audience at the Vatican on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Related video: Notre Dame coaches reflect on meeting Pope Leo while in Rome<\/p>\n

Leo told the teams from his alma mater Villanova and fellow Catholic university Notre Dame that in matters of sport, the pontiff is neutral.<\/p>\n

Then the pope, who was born Robert Prevost, said his former self might disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrevost has another opinion, but we won\u2019t do that now,\u201d he said to laughs during a whooping, cheering audience of 7,000 people from both schools \u2014 players, coaches, fans and their families \u2014 in the Vatican audience hall.<\/p>\n

The games are being played at the 11,000-seat Palazzo dello Sport, which is located about a half-hour drive from the Vatican.<\/p>\n

While Leo, who underwent lung cancer surgery last month<\/a>, was not expected to attend the games, a contingent of cardinals and other Vatican officials was expected at the arena.<\/p>\n

The schools also brought their team chaplains to Rome.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s game starts at 3:30 p.m. local (9:30 a.m. ET) and is being shown on Fox with Bill Raftery as the analyst. The women\u2019s game, which features the only ranked team of the day in No. 13 Notre Dame, is slated for 6 p.m. (noon ET) on FS1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They\u2019ve been blessed by the pope. And now it\u2019s finally time for some hoops. The Villanova and Notre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,173092,10634,8294,19188,916,10961,173091,2451,173090,53895,173094,76479,173093,531,11273,88856,86571,192],"class_list":["post-444248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-chicago-born-pope-leo-xiv","tag-coach","tag-college-basketball","tag-fan","tag-game","tag-notre-dame","tag-notre-dame-man","tag-p-m","tag-papal-audience","tag-pope-leo","tag-robert-prevost","tag-rome","tag-rome-leo","tag-school","tag-team","tag-vatican","tag-villanova","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}