WEST VIRGINIA ADVANCES TO FINAL

A day after West Virginia’s football coach suggested the university was considering leaving the Big East, another one of its teams took a step closer to winning the conference’s basketball championship. The No. 4-seeded Mountaineers outslugged Notre Dame, 53-51, on Friday night, ending the Irish’s six-game winning streak. They will play No. 8 Georgetown for the title on Saturday; the Hoyas thumped Marquette, 80-57, in the first semifinal at Madison Square Garden. West Virginia’s game against Notre Dame had a bizarre backdrop after the Mountaineers’ football coach, Bill Stewart, made controversial comments to a local television station. Stewart had made it sound like an inevitability that the Mountaineers would leave the Big East, talking expansively about the possibility. “I don’t know where we’re going to land,” Stewart told the station, WTAP. “We could land, whatever, in one of maybe three conferences, the A.C.C., the SEC, maybe the Big Ten.” In the stands at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, West Virginia’s athletic director, Ed Pastilong, spoke passionately about the university’s commitment to the Big East. “There has been no strategy on the part of West Virginia University with regard to contact with any other conference,” Pastilong said. “Let me re-emphasize: W.V.U. is committed to the Big East.”