Hoop and a prayer: Villanova and Notre Dame tip off season
ROME (AP) – One wall in the Notre Dame office of the Rev. Pete McCormick features a crucifix and religious icons.
Another wall features basketballs signed by Larry Bird and other NBA greats, plus a framed miniature version of the Fighting Irish hardwood floor.
McCormick may be best known for his call to postgame mass after the third quarters of Notre Dame football games. Basketball is his real love, though, and as team chaplain he’s going to have a special role in the college hoops season-opener against Villanova – which has its own team chaplain, the Rev. Rob Hagan – in Rome on Sunday.
In a video call from campus before flying to Italy, McCormick said that he gets to “kind of merge together two deep passions.”
“I love basketball. I mean, you can see in the back of my office, I got the court, I’ve got balls (also signed by Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon),” added McCormick, who likes to roll up the sleeves of his clerical shirt and shoot some hoops any chance he gets. “In some ways you might be led to believe that I’m working in the athletic department when I’m really the (assistant vice president) of campus ministry.”
The doubleheader featuring men’s and women’s games between the two Catholic universities will be preceded by a private audience with Pope Leo XIV on Saturday.
McCormick and Hagan are doing far more than just holding pregame prayers for the teams in Rome. There are customs to follow inside Vatican City and history lessons everywhere you look in Rome.
“If all they do is win a game and miss everything else, then so much will have been missed,” McCormick said. “So my job is going to be hang with them. Try to point out things that maybe otherwise they might not have seen and just live a little life with them.”
McCormick and Hagan have both cut down nets after titles: McCormick when Notre Dame won the ACC tournament in 2015; Hagan after Villanova’s NCAA championships in 2016 and 2018.
Most of their work comes off the court, though.
“A lot of these kids were stars in high school. And then they get to the next level and you’re not playing and you’re not performing to the level that you’re used to. There’s competition for your spot. And injury,” said Hagan, who was a criminal defense lawyer before he became a priest. “They have setbacks, physical, mental and spiritual. And so I found an opportunity to just kind of companion them on the journey.”
The Eternal City Tip-Off, as Sunday’s event has been labeled, coincides with All Saints’ Day.