Field

Picking the top half of the 64-team field for the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament is fairly routine. Take at least four teams from each of the country's elite conferences, toss in an automatic bid for the Ivy League champion, Princeton, and wait for the invitations to come out March 10.But picking the bottom half of the field -- the have-nots and never-will-bes -- is like getting a tooth pulled: Sometimes, it's pretty painless;...

He trudges across campus without fanfare, another Morgan State student with a bulging backpack, a blue-and-orange sweat shirt and a shy, winsome smile for the world at large. Nothing about George Howard suggests mayhem until he steps onto the football field. And then? "He turns into a monster," said Devan James, Morgan's star runner. The Bears' middle linebacker, Howard is the crux of a 5-1 Morgan team that is off to its best start in 30 years. A fearless and punishing hitter, his 84 tackles (43 solos)

Chris McAlister is at his best when he is shadowing the game's best receivers and avoiding the spotlight. After starting the season with a run-in with the law and broken curfews, the Ravens cornerback has thrived on the silent treatment. Over the past month, there have been few answers to the media and fewer questions about his play. The focus has been reshaping his reputation where it mattered the most. On the field. "I'm trying to get things back to normal and I don't know if they're there yet," McAlister said in his first lengthy interview since being benched in San Diego.

Thursday's Ravens game was a network television debut for PSINet's latest field. Like the team, it didn't look its best.The center part of the field was noticeably lighter in color than the outer two-thirds. ESPN's commentators even pointed out the differences in the fourth quarter, using on-screen pens to show the seams. Quarterback Tony Banks also appeared to have a hard time keeping his footing.The developer of the team's field said color differences will fade in coming weeks. He said slipping by players was probably due to nighttime dew or the use of the wrong cleats.

Jeremiah Conway has his senior year to look forward to - prom, graduation and eventually college. Also, Conway will have an added bonus as a senior football player at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School: a new, state-of-the-art field, thanks to a $1 million donation from a Baltimore Ravens foundation. "I'm happy, it's a good way to go out - on the [artificial] turf, not playing at other schools," the 18-year-old team captain said. Mervo athletes, including soccer, lacrosse and football players, will have new field turf, extra bleachers to double the seating and a ticket booth.

A 17-year-old Northeast Baltimore youth was charged in a warrant yesterday in the Thursday afternon shooting of a teen-ager near the football field at Lake Clifton-Eastern High School.Bobby Larry Saunders of the 3100 block of Ravenwood Ave. was charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder, a felony handgun violation, assault and possession of a deadly weapon on school property.Jason Crowthers, 18, of the 3300 block of Lyndale Ave. was shot in what police described as an ambush . After being struck once in the right thigh, Crowthers ran onto the field, where he collapsed during a junior varsity game, police said.

Maryland Bays and Baltimore Blast defender Joe Barger is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.For many female soccer fans in the Baltimore area, he's the perfect hunk (blond hair, blue eyes and boyish good looks).For the Bays, he's a defensive force and a workaholic.For the Blast, he's a role player who can intimidate the opposition.In the business world, he's a financial planning expert.In Baltimore County, he's a homeowner along with Blast forward Domenic Mobilio.To his parents and friends, he's the all-American boy who is almost too good to be true.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's breakneck effort to field a rudimentary missile defense system by 2004 is moving so fast that the Pentagon may end up with unworkable hardware that needs to be redesigned at a steep cost, Congress's independent watchdog agency warned yesterday. In the first official, unclassified challenge to the administration's plans, the General Accounting Office said in a report that the Pentagon's use of new and little-tested anti-missile technology puts the program "in danger of getting off track early and impairing the effort over the long term."

R. Lewis is back on the field and in position to lead again They shot through the fake smoke and out of the tunnel. Wide receiver Clarence Moore was at the front of the pack, but mostly, they came out together. Somewhere in there jogged the most eager player in pads, and whether Ray Lewis knew it or not, everything he did over the next 90 minutes was about to be put under the microscope. None of it was designed to tell us definitively what the regular season might hold, but all of it provided enough of a glimpse.

Folks in Eastport's Harbor House community don't remember when the field started to become a junkyard. It wasn't in the 1970s, when Thomas Abal, 76, watched the Capital ACs play softball from his back porch. But slowly, over the years, weeds grew up, and the game of choice became flag football. That, too, stopped eventually. The fence behind what was home plate fell into disrepair, and broken glass littered the field. Then it became a dumping ground for a construction project for two years.