The first week of November is going to be a busy one for sports at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.<\/p>\n
On Saturday that week, the Midshipmen\u2019s undefeated football team<\/a> will face longtime rival Notre Dame in a big-time matchup. And on Friday, the men\u2019s basketball team is hosting its annual Veterans Classic doubleheader.<\/p>\n And now, a high-profile matchup between two AP Top 25 ranked teams<\/a> in women\u2019s college basketball is moving to Alumni Hall on campus.<\/p>\n Sources close to the event confirmed to SB Nation that Navy will host the clash between No. 1 UConn and No. 20 Louisville on Tuesday, Nov. 4. An official announcement is expected as soon as Friday morning.<\/p>\n Billed as the Peraton Armed Forces Classic, the game had long been scheduled to be played at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, but organizers scrambled in recent days to find a new home for the matchup because of the government shutdown\u2019s impact on the base.<\/p>\n The shutdown is now in its 23rd day, and it means that paychecks for active duty military members and other federal employees aren\u2019t rolling in. Many facilities are scaling back operations and resources. The Ramstein Air Base\u2019s website says that \u201ccivilian personnel not engaged in excepted activities will be placed in a non-work, non-pay status,\u201d and the American Legion notes that many of the base\u2019s offices and programs are closed or offering \u201climited services.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, CT Insider reported<\/a> that Ramstein Air Base stopped communicating with ESPN Events as of Oct. 6. A spokesperson for ESPN told SB Nation<\/a> last week that it was \u201cexploring contingency plans due to the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n While the Naval Academy is feeling some impacts of the shutdown, its athletics department is mostly protected. The Naval Academy Athletic Association is a nonprofit that acts independently from the Department of Defense and the federal government. In 2017, former Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said<\/a> that the NAAA employs Navy coaches, owns the football stadium and gets only about 1% of its revenue from government support.<\/p>\n Speaking earlier this week at Louisville\u2019s media day, Cardinals\u2019 women\u2019s basketball coach Jeff Walz said he was \u201cpretty confident\u201d the game wasn\u2019t going to be played in Germany.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, 100 percent sure we will play the game – it\u2019s just a matter of where… Discouraged that our elected officials couldn\u2019t figure out a way to get our country back up and running, but nothing surprising these days,\u201d Walz said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be our [his and Geno Auriemma\u2019s] call to where things go… But ESPN has been great. ESPN has been nothing but first-class.\u201d<\/p>\n Auriemma mostly shied away from talking about it at Big East Media Day, saying, \u201cIs this a Pentagon question or a White House question? Am I going to get arrested if I say the wrong answer? I\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n ESPN has been hosting the Armed Forces Classic since 2012. This will be the first time it has been hosted by one of the Service Academies.<\/p>\n Other locations considered for the game included Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and venues connected to the campuses of Louisville and UConn, sources said.<\/p>\n The shutdown began on Oct. 1 when the Senate failed to advance a House-passed GOP bill to keep the government at existing funding through Nov. 21. Democrats in the Senate are demanding health care policy changes \u2014 specifically regarding extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces \u2014 that President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have refused to entertain. According to NPR<\/a>, some 24 million people use the ACA system to buy health plans. On Wednesday, for the 12th time, Democrats in the Senate blocked Republicans\u2019 short-term funding bill to reopen the government. The shutdown is expected to last at least through Monday, which would mark Day 27, as the Senate adjourned for the weekend on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s first term in office saw a record-long government shutdown, lasting 35 days. The shutdown is expected to last at least through Monday, which would mark Day 27, as the Senate adjourned for the weekend on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n Navy\u2019s Alumni Hall opened in 1991 and seats about 5,700 fans.<\/p>\n UConn is 20-3 all-time against Louisville and has won three of the last four meetings. This will mark the ninth time the Cardinals and Huskies have met on a neutral court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first week of November is going to be a busy one for sports at the U.S. Naval…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99,2664],"class_list":["post-247132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-womens-college-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}