On a lighter note, the Army and the Navy faced-off on a different battlefield last Saturday. The battlefield was a basketball court, and the event was the Patriot League Army-Navy Men’s Basketball Showdown, held at the Alumni Hall in Annapolis, Maryland. The game was witnessed by a sellout crowd of about 5,700 people.

The winning shot was a three-pointer from Navy senior forward Adam Teague, shot from a corner with 38 seconds remaining to cinch the win. Teague had not made a field goal all day, but compensated by making that all-too-important shot that sealed the deal.

Credits for fourteen of the Navy Midshipmen’s high of 17 points in the second half goes to Junior guard Chris Harris. This is the Navy’s seventh straight win over the Army Black Knights in the “Star” games.

The United States Military Academy (Army) and United States Naval Academy (Navy) play two times per season in the Patriot League, a college athletic conference that operates in the northeastern United States and has eight full-time member schools. In a seeming irony, the teams usually split each season with the Army Black Knights running away with the win on the first meeting, and the Navy Midshipmen clinching victory in the second.

The second game has been designated as the “Star” game since both the Army and Navy started playing twice in a Patriot League Season. The winning team for this game receives the Alumni Trophy, and each player receives a symbolic Star for the victory.

The first half of the game was rather bleak, finishing at 17-15 in favor of the Army. The first half turned out to be the ninth lowest-scoring half in the history of the Midshipmen. The Navy was able to pull through towards the middle of the second half, though, as an exceptional performance by Harris helped bring the scores up to a 42-28 lead in favor of the Navy.

The Navy women did not enjoy the same winning streak, though. The women’s basketball game finished with a score tally of 58-50 in favor of the Army.