Conference Tournament

Can Florida become college basketball's first repeat champion in 15 years? The NCAA thinks so. The Gators were made the top seed in the 2007 tournament by the NCAA men's basketball committee, which selects 34 at-large teams and seeds the 65-team field. Florida was placed there with good reason, as Joakim Noah and four other veteran starters ran their postseason winning streak to 12 games with another Southeastern Conference tournament title yesterday. Coach Billy Donovan's gang did so at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which happens to be the site of this year's Final Four.

If the University of Maryland wanted to schedule around Tamir Goodman's observance of the Jewish Sabbath, it would have to seek allowances with the Atlantic Coast Conference's television partners and ask the NCAA men's basketball committee for some flexibility during its tournament.Goodman, a 6-foot-3 junior at the Talmudical Academy in Pikesville, Sunday accepted a scholarship offer to play for the Terps. Goodman is an Orthodox Jew, and observance of the Sabbath has kept him from playing from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

The top four seeds are all but set.It's the other 60 that leave much room for debate.With the NCAA tournament selection committee still behind closed doors in a Kansas City, Mo., hotel room, the four months of the college basketball season has dwindled down to a few precious hours before the field of dreamers will be announced tonight on national television.Though the bubble has gotten smaller with most of the conference tournaments played out, the arguments rage on.Among them: Will Wake Forest's loss to North Carolina State in Friday's Atlantic Coast Conference quarterfinals and the Wolfpack's subsequent defeat to Duke yesterday eliminate both teams from consideration, or will they find a way to sneak in?

East1. North Carolina (30-3)Location, conference: Chapel Hill, N.C., Atlantic CoastConference finish: Second, won conference tournamentNCAA tournament record: 72-31, 31 seasonsCoach: Bill Guthridge (first season)Last 10: 8-2Top scorers: Antawn Jamison 22.9; Shammond Williams 16.5Top rebounder: Antawn Jamison 9.8Scouting report: The Tar Heels have the longest consecutive-appearance streak for NCAA tournaments (24). Bill Guthridge has kept the faithful happy, but they won't be happy if Antawn Jamison's back isn't healthy for tournament.

An article in yesterday's Sports section incorrectly reported the status of Navy basketball player Laurie Coffey. Now a senior, she will be with the team this season.The Sun regrets the errors.For about three hours yesterday, men's and women's coaches at seven of the area's Division I colleges gathered, forecasting positive outcomes for the coming season, a brief respite from their preparations for it."This actually is a relaxed atmosphere compared to when you get back to your office and you have to start working again," Towson men's coach Mike Jaskulski said of yesterday's Baltimore Basketball Topoff Luncheon at the Holiday Inn on Security Boulevard.

Coach of YearJim Busick, Gilman: Busick was watching his team play McDonogh during the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference championship match when he was asked for his feelings about the Greyhounds. "They're probably better than we are," said Busick, "but we really played well as a team." The Greyhounds ended McDonogh's six-year hold on the A Conference title with a 4-2 victory in the championship match. Despite losing at Nos. 1 and 2 singles, Gilman rallied and won the other three -- including two matches Busick's players had lost in the A Conference tournament just three days earlier -- plus clinching the crown with a victory in doubles.

This afternoon at 2 p.m., the nine-man Division I basketbal committee will gather at a Kansas City, Mo., hotel, and commence arguing over the distribution of the 34 at-large bids to the NCAA tournament. The job becomes harder when upsets occur in mid-major tournaments, and Rob Chavez is delighted that his conference is one of those making the committee squirm. **TC Santa Clara was bumped to the at-large pool when it was beaten in the first round of the West Coast Conference tournament by Pepperdine.

What: First round, NCAA Southeast RegionalWhere: Memphis, Tenn.When: Tonight, 7:50TV/Radio: Channel 13/WQSI (820 AM)How they got here: Kentucky won the Southeastern Conference tournament, beating Arkansas in the title game, 95-93, in overtime. Mount St. Mary's won the Northeast Conference tournament and automatic bid, beating Rider in the final, 69-62.Conference: Kentucky 14-2 in SEC East; Mount 12-6 in NECRanking: Kentucky second; Mount unrankedNCAA tournament record: In a record 35 previous appearances, Kentucky has a 61-32 record and five titles, the most recent in 1978.

Was one conference tournament upset enough for Florida and Providence?Did George Washington and Ohio University play their way out?The question that's most important to 10,000 local ticket-holders: Who's coming to Baltimore?The answers will come this evening, when the NCAA unveils the field and draw for its 64-team tournament. The Baltimore Arena is one of eight sites for first- and second-round games, and the tournament's first game will most likely be here Thursday.Debate began in earnest Thursday afternoon, when the nine members of the selection committee went into hiding at a hotel in Kansas City, Mo., and began to decide which teams will participate and which ones will have to settle for the National Invitation Tournament.

Towson State's season probably is over, but the Navy and Loyola men's basketball teams went into overtime to give themselves more work.The Tigers, regular-season champions of the Big South, lost in the conference tournament in Charleston, S.C., last night, falling to Liberty, 63-58, in the semifinals.Towson State was down by three with 10 seconds left when Liberty's Peter Aluma blocked a shot by the Tigers' Michael Keyes. Towson argued that the block was goaltending, but there was no call.

Maybe Connecticut will find some competition in the NCAA tournament, because the Big East tournament was a breeze for the top-ranked Huskies. Maya Moore scored 28 points and Connecticut cruised to its 15th Big East tournament championship with a 75-36 victory over No. 5 Louisville last night in Hartford. When the sensational sophomore walked off the floor with eight minutes left, she had single-handedly outscored Louisville 28-27. Moore was selected the tournament's most outstanding performer.

Roxann Alban Annapolis Alban, a second-year varsity player, finished second in the regionals, losing to Michelle Jordan of Broadneck, to advance to the state tournament. There, the sophomore made it to the quarterfinals before losing to Katelyn Stokes of Eleanor Roosevelt, the eventual state runner-up. "She is definitely a more solid player this year, and her emotional and mental control of her game has improved," coach Joanne Foster said. Brittany Bolster Liberty Bolster finished the regular season 15-0.

RALEIGH, N.C.-- --Despite unprecedented national attention the past few months - its school name gracing the hallowed pages of The New York Times and the colorful pages of ESPN The Magazine - the full story of the Morgan State men's basketball team hasn't yet been told. Nor has it been written. The attention thus far has been on the one story line that trumps all others, the redemption of coach Todd Bozeman, that pariah-turned-savior who has taken the program to unseen heights in his second year at Morgan State.

Charlottesville, Va.-- --There are a couple of ways to handle life on the bubble. Ideally, you spend the waning moments of the regular season tweaking the ol' postseason resume - some grammatical polish here, an exaggerated accomplishment and three-syllable superlatives everywhere else. Which makes what the Maryland men's basketball team has done especially confounding. Essentially, the Terps have taken what was a pretty formidable resume and redacted all the highlights, underscored their weaknesses and then ran the whole thing through a paper shredder.

It's the power of television, the prestige of the NCAA tournament, the chance to make another pitch to high school recruits. UMBC's appearance in the NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament tonight in Hartford, Conn., is about all of that. But it's mostly about the three seniors who took it on the chin as freshmen, playing through a dreary 4-24 season, but found a way to change the image of the program in the end. The finishing touches on the makeover came last week, when the Retrievers (16-16)

It's not every day that a pack of Retrievers turns into Cinderella but what has happened to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County women's basketball team is no fairy tale. Few outside of Catonsville (and probably not that many inside either) could have predicted that the Retrievers would make it to the NCAA tournament. After all, this was a squad that ended the regular season with a losing record and was seeded a dismal seventh out of nine teams for the America East conference championship.

Can Florida become college basketball's first repeat champion in 15 years? The NCAA thinks so. The Gators were made the top seed in the 2007 tournament by the NCAA men's basketball committee, which selects 34 at-large teams and seeds the 65-team field. Florida was placed there with good reason, as Joakim Noah and four other veteran starters ran their postseason winning streak to 12 games with another Southeastern Conference tournament title yesterday. Coach Billy Donovan's gang did so at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which happens to be the site of this year's Final Four.

New York -- Eric Hicks, Cincinnati's imposing senior forward, removed the "Scarface" T-shirt he had worn during warm-ups and attacked Syracuse in the first game of the 27th annual Big East Conference men's basketball tournament. It was as big as first-round conference tournament games get, but at high noon Wednesday, there were perhaps 3,000 people at Madison Square Garden. It wasn't packed to capacity yesterday afternoon, either, when the Orange continued its magic with a quarterfinal upset of top-ranked Connecticut in overtime.

It's easy to forecast an NCAA tournament without Maryland and Syracuse, the champions in 2002 and 2003. There were times last month when Arizona, Kentucky and Indiana were in similarly dire straits, but those college basketball bluebloods located the proper direction and added a bit of clarity to a selection process of 34 at-large teams that is as murky as ever. The bracket for the 65-team NCAA field will be announced Sunday night. The Missouri Valley Conference made a big push up the computer rankings this winter and could get as many as five teams, the kind of representation that has traditionally been the domain of six major conferences.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A year ago, the scenario looked so different when the University of Maryland came to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. Regardless of how they performed, the Terrapins knew they already had secured a trip to the East Regional as the school's first-ever top seed in NCAA tournament history. One year after losing in the conference tournament semifinals, then rolling to their first NCAA championship, 14th-ranked Maryland has something far more tangible to shoot for - besides the chance to win the school's first official league crown since 1984 and only the third in the ACC's 50 years.