Alex

Mark Turgeon has talked often in the preseason about how much bulkier and self-assured center Alex Len is compared to last year. The Maryland basketball coach went a step further Saturday by pronouncing Len as his only certain starter. "You ask me who's starting, I'd say Alex Len is starting," Turgeon said following an intrasquad scrimmage at Comcast Center in which the 7-foot-1 Len and transfer Dez Wells were standouts. "After that, I really don't know. " If the season began this weekend, Turgeon said he would have a deeper rotation than last season, when he needed to use walk-ons to fill out a thin roster.

Baltimore Sun reporters Jeff Barker and Don Markus and editor Matt Bracken weigh in on the three biggest topics of the past week in Maryland  sports. Coach Mark Turgeon talked this week about how much center Alex Len has progressed during the offseason. How good can Len be this season? Jeff Barker: Turgeon was so enthusiastic about Len's progress -- his conditioning, his summer practices, his attitude --  that he kept starting to say that the player could be twice as good in the low post as he was last year.

- Bulkier and more self-assured, Maryland center Alex Len appears poised for a breakout season after an uneven freshman year in which he said he struggled to adjust to the physical nature of the American game and to understand play calls because of his limited English. "I didn't understand a lot of plays," the 7-foot-1, Ukraine-born player said Tuesday in his first interview since joining the Terps last year. "I wasn't getting it, so it was really hard. I was really like confused on the court.

Alex Len's command of English has improved enough that Maryland made the 7-foot-1 Ukrainian center available to the media today for the first time. I will have a full-length story on Len later today with lots more details. In the meantime, here are some highlights: * Len said his game suffered last season because he had so much difficulty with the language that he couldn't always understand what plays were called. “The first three months was the hardest because I didn't know any language.

The chair of the Maryland Republican Party admits he erred by not disavowing his congressional campaign before he started working part-time for Rep. Roscoe Bartlett in June. Alex Mooney began raising money last year for a 2012 bid for Maryland's Sixth District seat, which Bartlett currently holds. After Bartlett announced he was running again - he is a 10-term incumbent in the Western Maryland district - Mooney filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission indicating that he was holding onto the funds he had raised for a 2014 campaign.

Many of the hundreds gathered Tuesday at Mount Vernon's Washington Monument had their perceptions of safety shaken last week, after a double shooting that critically wounded a gregarious neighborhood ambassador and claimed the life of a recent transplant looking to jump-start a photography career. But Rose Ulrich, the mother of fatal shooting victim Alex Ulrich, 40, told the crowd to have faith. "Alex loved Baltimore. … He loved walking around, visiting with friends, going to the Walters Art Gallery, loved the park, loved this area," said Ulrich, who along with her family drove in from Western Maryland.

In 25 at bats this week, the No. 1 Cardinals' junior catcher had 16 hits - five of them home runs and three grand slams. Two of those grand-slams were game-winners. He also had three doubles, drove in 16 runs and scored another 10. On defense, his fielding percentage was .977. "His stats are somebody's career," Calvert Hall coach Lou Eckerl said. Making the performance more amazing. Murphy had not hit a home run before this week. A three-year starter, Murphy, 6-feet-1 and 210 pounds, has orally committed to Wake Forest.

If you're a Maryland fan, you hope for incremental progress this season. You hope to see an upward arc. Coach Mark Turgeon said today that the next step for his young team is to win a road game, particularly one against a team it is not expected to beat. Miami has the same conference record as the Terps (3-3) so a victory in Coral Gables on Wednesday night wouldn't be too surprising. But it would be Maryland's first road win of the season. The Terps are 0-3 on the road (0-2 in ACC games)

Maryland center Alex Len came off the bench Wednesday after being a starter in the previous eight games. Len was nursing a sore ankle. Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said Friday that the 7-footer may not start against Virginia Tech on Saturday, even though the ankle seems healed. "We brought him off the bench (against Duke). I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that again tomorrow and just see if that helps him relax," Turgeon said. As you can tell, that's not set in stone. Len picked up two quick fouls against the Blue Devils and his playing time was limited.

It is the question Maryland basketball fans seem to be asking themselves. Heck, it's the question Mark Turgeon must be asking himself when he goes to sleep at night and gets up in the morning What has happened to Alex Len? The player who had Terps fans chanting "We love you Alex" during his impressive debut last month against Albany and then followed up with equally strong performances against Radford and Cornell has slowly disappeared in Maryland's four ACC games. Except for a few spurts on the offensive end against N.C. Stateand on the defensive end against Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, the 7-1 freshman from the Ukraine has looked out of sync.