The Unrivaled playoff semifinals on March 2 will take place at Barclays Center, home of the WNBA’s New York Liberty and NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, the women’s 3-on-3 league announced Friday.

The chance to play in Brooklyn materialized after 21,490 fans packed Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena to watch a pair of Unrivaled games on Jan. 30, multiple media outlets reported.

That was a record attendance figure for regular-season women’s pro basketball, according to multiple media outlets, with Unrivaled making $2 million in ticket, merchandise and sponsorship revenue from the stop.

Barclays Center seats 17,732 for basketball. The Liberty’s average attendance in 2025 was 16,323, which ranked third in the WNBA.

“We’ve been in conversations with Barclays for a while,” Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell told Front Office Sports. “We had already built a relationship. Candidly, we were looking at potential stops for next year, so we’re in active dialogue with numerous venues across the country. This just so happened that the Nets were out of town. Coming off the heels of Philly, the excitement around it, we look at this as an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

Unrivaled’s regular season concludes Feb. 27 and the first playoff round is scheduled for the next day in Miami, where all other league games have been played.

Semifinalists that clash in Brooklyn will be trying to reach the March 4 championship game back in Miami. The triumphant team gets to split $600,000 in prize money.

Unrivaled’s eight teams deploy such WNBA stars as league scoring leader Marina Mabrey (26.8 points per game) and assists leader Paige Bueckers (6.7 per game).

Chelsea Gray was named Finals MVP when her Unrivaled squad, Rose Basketball Club, won the inaugural championship last March.

–Field Level Media

Teams coming off difficult road losses meet Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati as Xavier takes on Marquette in a Big East rematch.

Xavier (12-12, 4-9 Big East) is coming off an 87-82 overtime loss on Monday to No. 17 St. John’s while Marquette (9-16, 4-10) blew a late nine-point lead Tuesday against Villanova.

In their first meeting on Jan. 7 in Milwaukee, Marquette came away with a 66-65 win, one of three one-point losses this season for Xavier. Marquette forward Ben Gold’s putback dunk in the final minute of regulation proved to be the game-winner for the Golden Eagles.

Gold finished with 10 points and had five of Marquette’s 19 offensive rebounds.

Rebounding remains an issue for the Musketeers, who have relied on strong guard and wing play this season without much size in the middle.

Xavier did not outrebound any of its last five opponents and was beaten 47-34 on the boards in the first matchup with Marquette.

In Monday’s loss at Madison Square Garden, St. John’s grabbed three offensive rebounds on its final possession of regulation before hitting a game-tying tip-in.

“We had a chance to win it. I’m proud of the effort. They’re great kids. I really believe in what we’re building,” Xavier head coach Richard Pitino said.

Xavier, which has lost two straight games and five of six, is trying to avoid falling below .500 for the first time since finishing the 2023-24 season with a 16-18 mark.

One game after scoring a career-high 18 points, Marquette freshman Adrien Stevens matched that total last time out versus Villanova. In the last two games, Stevens made 11 of 22 shots and was 10-of-19 (52.6%) from behind the 3-point line.

Stevens knocked down a career-best six treys against Butler on Feb. 7 and reached double figures in three of the past four games.

Royce Parham finished with a career night at Villanova, posting his first double-double — and the team’s first this season — with a 26-point, 11-rebound effort in 37 minutes. Parham averaged 17.1 points over his last seven games.

“Just my coaches trusting in me,” Parham said. “They believed in me and were calling up a lot of plays for me (against Villanova). I was kind of being more assertive today, too. I just kept going, flowing with that.”

–Field Level Media

The NFL selected Tiger Woods’ sports business venture, TMRW Sports, as its operational partner for a professional flag football league that is in development, according to a report by Sportico.

Sources told the publication that TMRW Sports beat out about a dozen competitors in a bid process. NFL owners voted in December to authorize the search for a partner and invest up to $32 million to support the creation of the new league.

TMRW Sports confirmed its interest in flag football to Sportico but would not comment on discussions with the NFL.

“We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in one year, and the league is moving forward,” an NFL spokesperson told Sportico while declining further comment.

Woods co-founded TMRW, the group behind the TGL indoor golf league, in 2022 with fellow golf star Rory McIlroy and media executive Mike McCarley. Backers with ties to the NFL include Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Minnesota Vikings owner Mark Wilf and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.

The NFL has embraced flag football by making it the cornerstone event of the revamped Pro Bowl Games and allowing players to compete in the sport’s Olympic debut at Los Angeles in 2028.

“Today’s vote represents a critical step in establishing flag football as a premier global sport,” NFL executive Troy Vincent Sr. said in December when owners green-lit the new pro league.

“We are developing the infrastructure to accelerate the game’s growth to new heights by creating a clear pathway for aspiring athletes to progress from youth and high school programs through college and now to the professional level. We look forward to forming a partnership to bring this vision to life and deliver a world-class professional flag football experience for elite athletes and fans alike.”

–Field Level Media