{"id":902083,"date":"2026-11-01T11:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T11:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902083\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T11:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T11:46:15","slug":"villanova-and-notre-dame-open-the-college-basketball-season-in-rome-following-papal-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902083\/","title":{"rendered":"Villanova and Notre Dame open the college basketball season in Rome following papal audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME \u2013 They\u2019ve been blessed by the pope<\/a>. And now it\u2019s finally time for some hoops.<\/p>\n

The Villanova<\/a> and Notre Dame<\/a> 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<\/a>, was created to honor the first American pope.<\/p>\n

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

Leo told the teams from his alma mater Villanova and fellow Catholic university<\/a> 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, 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<\/a> 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<\/a> 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

___<\/p>\n

Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here<\/a>. See AP\u2019s full men\u2019s basketball coverage here<\/a> and women\u2019s college basketball coverage here<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME \u2013 They\u2019ve been blessed by the pope. And now it\u2019s finally time for some hoops. The Villanova…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[377741,4,450,451,3,19431,99,452,453],"class_list":["post-902083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-bill-raftery","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902083","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=902083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}