Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misstated the year NBC, TNT Sports could join Fox as broadcast partners for Big East basketball games. The deals, if completed, are expected to start before the 2025-26 season.

Big East men’s and women’s college basketball is on the verge of adding new television partners as NBC Sports and TNT Sports are expected to join Fox Sports in presenting games beginning in the 2025-26 season, sources briefed on the negotiations told The Athletic.

While Fox Sports will remain the top partner, both NBC, which will feature most of its games on Peacock, and TNT Sports, which operates the streaming service Max, are anticipated to add a large number of games.

The financial terms of the expected new agreements are not yet known. The agreement is not yet formalized and the other incumbent, CBS Sports — which does a smaller package of games — is still holding discussions.

NBC Sports, TNT Sports, Fox Sports and the Big East declined to comment.

The potential moves by NBC Sports and TNT Sports continue their buying sprees, that are centered around the competition over the rights to the NBA. NBC is joining ESPN and Amazon Prime Video in completing legal paperwork to make it partners with the NBA on 11-year deals.

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What to expect in…

The weekend was packed with dramatic conference tournament showdowns.

Some were predictable: South Carolina winning another SEC championship. Caitlin Clark doing Caitlin Clark things to win the Big Ten title. UConn dominating to advance to the Big East finals.

Some were less predictable: Iowa needing a comeback against Nebraska. Georgetown advancing to the Big East finals. USC taking down Stanford for the Pac-12 crown.

But the lasting image, unfortunately for the sport, will be the benches clearing in the South Carolina-LSU game.

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Fight late in South Carolina-LSU leads to several ejections

Here’s what else you need to know about the conference tournaments and how teams fared as we inch closer to Selection Sunday:

Don’t bet against the Irish. Here’s why …

Injuries have been a part of so many team’s stories this season, but when it comes to Notre Dame, there aren’t many teams who’ve been hit harder. First, it was Olivia Miles, who sustained a knee injury in last season’s ACC tournament and has missed the entire season. Then, it was Cassandre Prosper, who played only five games this season before suffering a lower leg injury. Then, it was Sonia Citron, who missed weeks in the middle of the season with a knee injury.

When Kylee Waton went down in the ACC…

Throughout her college career, Caitlin Clark has made a habit of doing things no one has ever seen before. In the Big Ten quarterfinals against Penn State, Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder saw something completely new from her star guard. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her miss 11 3s in a row,” she said. “And that could probably include practice and everything else. I’ve never seen that.”

Yes, Clark, the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, didn’t make a 3-pointer until 8:41 remained in the game. She missed her first 11 attempts. But of course, when Clark did hit her first triple, she made history. With 164 3-pointers, she has more treys in a season than any other NCAA scorer — male or female — passing former Davidson star Stephen Curry and former Liberty guard Darius McGhee.

Five Hawkeyes scored in double figures in Iowa’s 33-point victory.

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Clark surpasses Curry to become single-season 3-point leader

Around the country, Friday’s slate was full of more intrigue, including a night cap in Las Vegas.

USC has earned a No. 1 seed

LAS VEGAS — At shootaround Friday, the Trojans coaching staff had the number 1 on the brain – not containing UCLA point guard Kiki Rice (who wears jersey No. 1), but whether the results of the day could put them in position for a No….

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Three steps out the door, he stopped to say hello. Two more and a police officer and his wife asked for a picture. A shuffle along and a fan came up with his boy wearing a Devin Carter jersey, asking whether he could say hello. Motoring finally back toward his locker room, he asked to pause and walked into the warm embrace of a friend who wrapped his hand around the back of his head, drawing him into his shoulder. And then one last stop, a security guard who’s been holding fort in the building for six years called his name, and Ed Cooley stopped and hugged him, too.

No one in Providence right now wants to hear about any of this. They want to bathe in the joy of their 84-76 win over Georgetown and the exorcism of the coach that betrayed them it delivers. Human Ed Cooley is not welcome in the town where fans turned “F— Ed Cooley” into a daylong chorus.

But this, of course, is the ironic twist in the whole thing: Fans at Providence wouldn’t hate him so much today if they didn’t love him so hard for so long. And they loved him because he was so very good at his job. No one, let’s face it, is angry at Keno Davis.

This game wasn’t just about Cooley; it was because of him. He built Providence back up by doing exactly what he said he would do at the…

NEW YORK — Darnell Haney was packing his bag to leave for New York, prepping to serve as a stand-in for Tasha Butts at Big East media day, when his phone rang Monday morning.

Just six months ago, the former Jacksonville University coach fielded another phone call, this one from Butts herself. He figured then that the new Georgetown coach was calling about one of his assistants, ready to offer a position on her staff.

She was offering a position — only to Haney himself. He and his wife, Aaliyah, didn’t need to think long about the offer. Haney and Butts knew each other only a little bit, mostly from the recruiting trail. But he felt a connection with the woman often described as a force of nature. “Aligned’’ is the word he uses over and over.

It’s that same alignment that guided Haney on Monday, through Tuesday, and he suspects will shape him for the next months to come. The phone call he took around 8:15 Monday morning gutted him, learning that the 41-year-old Butts had died of breast cancer. Yet he instinctively knew what she would want him to do. All of the Hoyas did.

We’re starting @bigeast media day #tashatough

Coach Tasha is always with us #tashatoughtuesday #earnednevergiven #hoyasaxa #bemediaday pic.twitter.com/C5g2Yk63NP

— Georgetown WBB…

Georgetown women’s basketball coach Tasha Butts, 41, has died after being diagnosed two years ago with advanced-stage metastatic breast cancer, Georgetown announced Monday.

Georgetown hired Butts last April after almost two decades as an assistant coach, spanning multiple conferences. She spent four seasons as an assistant and associate head coach at Georgia Tech, eight seasons as an assistant at LSU, three seasons as an assistant at UCLA and a season at Duquesne.

“The news of Tasha’s passing is incredibly sad,” Georgia Tech coach Nell Fortner said in a release. “Tasha was so instrumental to the success of this program. What she did as a member of this coaching staff cannot be undervalued. She was tough — tough on her kids, tough in her expectations, but yet she was soft underneath when players needed her to be there for them, and she was always there for them. We are incredibly sad this day has come. She battled from the day of her diagnosis. We are proud of her fight to the end. We will forever love Tasha. She will forever be missed.”

As a player, Butts had an impressive career as a guard at Tennessee playing for Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt. She left Tennessee ranked fourth all-time in games played (141), won four SEC regular-season titles and helped the Lady…

The NCAA waiver allowing first-time transfers immediate eligibility created one of the biggest shifts in college sports in the last decade. Players now have significantly more freedom to move between schools, making it sometimes seem like an exodus of players from one program to the next.

After the 2019-20 season, just more than 600 women’s basketball players ended up in the portal. Last year, that number nearly doubled to 1,197 players in the transfer portal. Just days into the NCAA Tournament, more than 450 women’s basketball players are already in the portal. Coaches sometimes bemoan portal-induced roster turnover of both starters and reserves, but they also know the portal is a key means to building their own programs for the upcoming season and beyond.

Here’s a look at the top prospects who are available in the transfer portal:

Hottinger has her COVID-19 season to use, and the reigning Patriot League player of the year has opted to go elsewhere. She averaged 20.3 points and 9.5 rebounds this season and has 62 career starts under her belt, so she’d bring productivity and experience with her. She should be able to make the jump to the power conference level. With Dawn Plitzuweit named the Gophers’ new coach Saturday, could we see this Minnesota native return home?

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NEW YORK — Big East commissioner Val Ackerman acknowledged Tuesday that her conference isn’t likely to be immune to conference realignment.

“I don’t think the Big East will stay at 11 forever,” Ackerman told The Athletic during the league’s media day at Madison Square Garden. “I can’t quantify when, but there’s too much going on around us. Maybe it’s proactive, or it could be reactive expansion. You’d rather be proactive, but maybe other things helping elsewhere and certain opportunities are presented to us that we didn’t see and then we act on those. Either way, it’s fine.”

Odds are if the league does act it will do so before February 2024. That’s when the Big East’s negotiation window with Fox opens, and with the network already shelling out billions for college football, the conference will want to present the best product to make it enticing.

But the league is in a unique position to be choosy. Now in its 10th year since its reconfiguration, one made necessary by the last major wave of realignment, the Big East is no longer susceptible to being picked apart. It has no football — save UConn — to steal, and thereby can seek teams rather than fend off the power conferences. Ackerman said the league will consider a number of factors if and…

(Editor’s note: Bob Knight died Wednesday at 83.)

About a week before the 1984 Olympics, Bob Knight rode shotgun in a Mustang convertible through the streets of Southern California. The United States men’s basketball coach had his feet up on the dashboard and the seat leaned back.

Pete Newell was behind the wheel. Henry Iba sat scrunched in the back seat. Both former Team USA head coaches had been involved with the 1984 squad since the trials began three months earlier, in April. Newell was a longtime mentor of Knight, practically a father figure to the Indiana coach. Iba’s wife had died a year earlier, and Knight had invited him to the trials to serve as a consultant to the Olympic staff. It was the escape Iba needed.

Behind the Mustang, a bus transported Knight’s team and staff. The 12 players on board had emerged from perhaps the greatest collection of amateur talent the sport had seen. Among the 72 prospects invited to the Olympic trials in Bloomington, Ind., were 37 future first-round NBA Draft picks, 12 future NBA All-Stars and seven future Hall of Famers. The historical implications weren’t lost on those there. Midway through the trials, George Washington big man Michael Brown asked every player to sign a trials game program, a souvenir he would keep for…