Bullets

With his team getting unexpected competition from Division III Gettysburg for more than a half, Navy basketball coach Don DeVoe got an unexpected lift from lightly played sophomore power forward Josh Hill, making his first varsity start at Alumni Hall yesterday.Hill, playing in place of team scoring leader Sitapha Savane, who is nursing a sore left knee, crammed 11 of his 15 points into the second half when the Midshipmen (10-3) pulled away from a shaky one-point lead with 16: 36 left to rout the Bullets, 81-49.

At the 20th anniversary reunion of the Washington Bullets' 1978 NBA title team, Joe Pace looked like a champion.The former Coppin State star arrived in a stretch limousine. He wore a blue, double-breasted suit with red pinstripes that seemed tailor-made for his 6-foot-11 frame. He came alone, but happily embraced his former teammates and complimented their wives and girlfriends.Still lean at 44, the 12th man on that title team appeared as if he could still hold his own on the court.The image, however, belied reality.

BayRunners coach Herb Brown said signing former Washington Bullets No. 1 pick LaBradford Smith could turn out to be "the steal of the year."The BayRunners announced the acquisition of Smith and University of Maryland standout Rodney Elliott yesterday. The two become the eighth and ninth members of the team.Smith returns to the United States after playing in Europe the past three seasons. The Bullets took Smith -- 6 feet 4, 202 pounds -- as the 19th overall pick in the 1991 draft."He exudes class.

No plans have been announced as to where Wilt Chamberlain, who died suddenly yesterday at the age of 63, will be put to rest. But if the basketball legend had his way, his epitaph would read: "Nobody loves Goliath."In this era of superlatives, when every unusual sports feat is heralded as extraordinary and every clutch basket by Michael Jordan was etched in stone, it is easy to forget how Wilton Norman Chamberlain totally dominated pro basketball in the '60s with both his brute strength and athletic ability.

In the NationUranium bullets fired at controversial facilityMIAMI -- U.S. Marines mistakenly fired uranium bullets at a Navy facility in Puerto Rico that has been the subject of protests over maneuvers that killed a civilian and wounded four other people, U.S. officials said yesterday.The Puerto Rican Independence Party, which has been leading protests against the U.S. Navy on the island of Vieques off Puerto Rico's east coast, alleged last week that the U.S. military had fired the prohibited rounds.

Paul "The Bear" Hoffman, the only Big Ten basketball player in history to be selected an All-American four straight years and later the rookie enforcer on the 1947-48 Baltimore Bullets championship team, died yesterday morning at GBMC's Gilchrist Center.Hoffman, 73, had spent two weeks at the hospice after his illness was diagnosed as a malignant brain tumor.Hoffman, an Indiana native and 1947 graduate of Purdue, was selected by his alma mater in 1998 as one of the Boilermakers' top 12 all-time basketball players.

There would be no parade up Charles Street to celebrate the 1947-48 Baltimore Bullets' Basketball Association of America title. No proclamation from Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. No championship rings or even a banner to commemorate the event.In fact, aside from the 4,000-odd hard-core fans who packed the Coliseum on Monroe Street the night of April 21, 1948, for the Bullets' 88-73, title-clinching victory over the Philadelphia Warriors, Baltimore's first major-league championship of the century was a well-kept secret.

Clyde Shover pounded the dirt down around a sprig of newly planted ornamental grass yesterday to the beat of 20 people in the distance shooting guns, five rounds every four seconds.The Anne Arundel County Police Academy shooting range is 800 yards down the slope of his back yard, but he's not complaining about the noise, not anymore.Leaning on his shovel, he listened hard and evaluated: It sounds less what's the word?Loud?No, dangerous. It sounds less dangerous, he said.Flying bulletsStover, like many of his neighbors who have complained for years about noise levels and stray bullets flying into their yards, was excited yesterday at the opening of the Anne Arundel Academy police firing range in Davidsonville.

PHOENIX -- Two Baltimore-area boys teams finished second at the U.S. Youth Soccer National Championships at the Rose Mofford Sport Complex.Missing standout central defender Michael Green, the Columbia Darby conceded two early goals and was routed, 5-1, by the Colorado Rush Warriors of Littleton in the under-20 title match yesterday morning.The Baltimore F.C. Bullets had the misfortune of drawing the home team in their U-19 final late Saturday night. Spurred on by a loudly supportive, standing-room-only crowd of several hundred more than the 3,700 seating capacity, Phoenix's Cisco Flames used a pair of second-half goals to overcome the Bullets, 2-1, for the 61st McGuire Cup.That left the S.C. Baltimore Stars with the last chance to bring gold back to Baltimore.

Buddy Jeannette, a former Baltimore Bullets player-coach and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, died yesterday in Nashua, N.H. He was 80.Jeannette had been in ill health and suffered a stroke recently.Harry "Buddy" Jeannette spent nine seasons between 1946 and 1967 in Baltimore as a player, coach and general manager of the Bullets.He played pro basketball in a much different era from today's multimillion-dollar contracts.Jeannette was lured to Baltimore in 1946 by making what was then a large salary demand.

He wasn't much to look at - a slender, 6-foot-3 guard with knobby knees, creaky hips and elbows that looked as if they had been run through a pencil sharpener. But, oh, could Earl Monroe play basketball. For four years, Monroe wowed the crowds in Baltimore with circus shots, between-the-legs dribbles and no-look passes. "God couldn't go one-on-one with Earl Monroe," former Bullet Ray Scott once said of his Hall of Fame teammate. From the time Monroe hit town as a rookie in 1967, the Civic Center was his juke joint.

Authorities say Terrell Allen was a Baltimore drug kingpin who kidnapped the teenage brothers of an alleged rival in 2008 and returned them for a half-million-dollar ransom, launching a string of retaliatory shootings that has continued right up until this summer. But his attorney denies the allegations, and Allen has never been formally charged with any of them. Instead, he was convicted Tuesday on the easiest thing to prove: possession of ammunition, a federal offense for a felon like Allen, who has prior convictions for manslaughter and drugs and has beaten dozens of other charges, including murder.

Every year during the NBA playoffs, Don Ohl's eyes brighten, his step quickens and his heart beats a little faster - but not dangerously so for Ohl, 73, a survivor of six-way bypass surgery. The playoffs always brought out the best in the one-time star of the Baltimore Bullets. More than 40 years later, the man nicknamed "Waxie" for his crew cut still holds the Washington Wizards' franchise record for highest postseason scoring average. In 13 playoff games for Baltimore in 1965 and 1966, Ohl averaged 26.2 points, stellar work for a 6-foot-3 guard who practically carried those upstart Bullets on his back at crunch time.

Each Tuesday in the Toy Department, veteran Sun sportswriter Mike Klingaman tracks down a former local sports figure and lets you know what's going on in his/her life in a segment called "Catching Up With ..." When he chose pro basketball over a medical career, folks thought Jack Marin should have had his head examined. Play for the bedraggled Baltimore Bullets rather than become a doctor? Forty-three years later, Marin has no regrets. The Bullets' top draft pick in 1966 wouldn't change a thing.

Jodie Meeks scored a school-record 54 points to help Kentucky cruise to a 90-72 win over No. 24 Tennessee last night. Meeks, who broke Dan Issel's 39-year-old record of 53 points set at Mississippi, was mobbed by his Kentucky teammates in the middle of the Thompson-Boling Arena court in Knoxville, where the Wildcats (13-4, 2-0 Southeastern Conference) handed the Volunteers their third loss in January. "It means a lot to be in the same sentence as Dan Issel. It's mind-boggling," he said.

For 45 minutes Tuesday night, Earl Monroe and a roomful of wistful and inquisitive basketball observers brought the Baltimore Bullets back to life. The resurrection of the beloved NBA representative of a proud city was long overdue, but when it comes to the NBA and Baltimore, what isn't overdue? The reason for Monroe's presence at Verizon Center in Washington - in a building and city in which he never played - was just one example. A week from Saturday, The Pearl's No. 10 will be retired by the Wizards, the franchise that was once the Bullets.

Jim Karvellas, whose courtside play-by-play as radio voice of the Baltimore Bullets during the 1960s and 1970s chronicled such legendary players as Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld and Gus Johnson, died of prostate cancer Monday at his daughter's home in Wesley Chapel, Fla. He was 71. Karvellas also had stints in the announcing booth with the Baltimore Colts and Orioles during a broadcast career that spanned more than 40 years. Born and raised Demetrie C. Karvellas, he was the son of a Greek immigrant grocer on Chicago's South Side.

At age 31, Jason Beau Moody has collected nine criminal convictions, five of them felonies. Most of those sentences have included suspended jail time and probation, which he has violated at least twice. Yesterday, Moody -- a man authorities call a sophisticated, dangerous criminal with access to forged documents -- was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the maximum term possible for his manslaughter and weapons violations convictions last month. He was convicted of gunning down Kevin Shields, 26, in July 2003 on a Northwest Baltimore parking lot, in front of the man's young son, Jose.

A Howard County judge sentenced an 18-year-old Columbia man to 15 years in prison for the shooting of a 4-year-old boy who was hit by a stray bullet this year and for an unrelated sexual offense involving a 13-year-old acquaintance. Tion Jamaar Bell pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, a handgun charge and a fourth-degree sex offense. Prosecutors dropped attempted first- and second-degree murder charges after Brandon Bonner, who they said was the intended victim of the shooting, could not be found.

Robert Abrams had an effusive greeting for the sharp-dressed man he embraced outside the Men's Health Center on North Avenue yesterday. "When are you going to come back," Abrams asked Earl Monroe, "and run for mayor?" Monroe was here at the invitation of the Baltimore City Health Department, to encourage screening and treatment for an enlarged prostate, something that he has. It may be news to anyone under 40, but Monroe didn't have to remind a packed conference room that the NBA once played here.