Villanova touches down in Rome for college basketball season opener and papal audience

ROME (AP) — It hit Villanova coach Kevin Willard early Thursday morning when he got off the charter flight that carried the university’s men’s and women’s teams to Rome for Sunday’s season-opening college basketball doubleheader against Notre Dame .

Villanova, Willard believes, has a responsibility to represent Pope Leo XIV, who graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the Augustinian school near Philadelphia.

“At first, I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal, but when we landed, you understand he is our best alumnus and most notable alumnus," Willard said. "He’s also the most famous person on earth.”

Sunday’s games might not even be the highlight of the trip. That honor likely belongs to the private audience that Leo is scheduled to hold with the four teams and their 7,000 traveling fans on Saturday.

The team already drove by the Colosseum on their way to practice and plans to see the Spanish Steps, too.

“It’s crazy, the things that basketball has led us to do,” Villanova guard Jake Fiegen said.

Villanova 7-foot-3 freshman center Luigi Suigo , a 19-year-old Italian who is a projected NBA draft lottery pick, is the team’s unofficial tour guide.

“At the hotel he was instructing us not to put meatballs in our pasta,” Fiegen said. “Just American things that probably aren’t custom here.”

Jasmine Bascoe, a junior guard from Milton, Ontario, on the Villanova women’s team, said the players were told not to sleep more than a half hour at a time on the flight to avoid jet lag.

“So we were active on that plane, up walking, joking around, playing lots of games, keeping our legs moving,” Bascoe said. “I brought my Switch. I was playing some Switch games. I love Sudoku, lots of Sudoku.”

Bascoe is one of four members of her team who already came to Italy on a preseason trip in 2024 that included three practice games, continuous gelato, and “a lot of pasta.”

The trips to Italy are extra special for Bascoe because her mother is of Italian descent.

“When you do the summer tour, you have an opportunity to see everything. But with this trip, we’re going to focus (on) Pope Leo and then the game itself,” coach Denise Dillon said.

So how can Villanova contain Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo , last season’s Naismith national defensive player of the year and a top WNBA prospect?

“I don’t know if there’s really anyone who has learned to contain Hannah Hidalgo,” Dillon said. “So it’s just the recognition of her abilities and the team itself.”

Notre Dame is ranked No. 13 in The Associated Press preseason Top 25 women’s basketball poll .

Villanova isn’t ranked. But the Wildcats hold a wild card they hope can negate even “the luck of the (Fighting) Irish.”

“I never thought that one day I would go to the same school as the pope,” Bascoe said. “We’re definitely going to take his luck and his holiness on our side.”

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