Halftime Lead

Host Severn jumped out to a 16-point halftime lead and never looked back in a 22-0 upset of No. 3 McDonogh yesterday. It was the first win for the unranked Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference Admirals over the A Conference Eagles since 1995. "Our defense just did an outstanding job," said Severn coach John Beckman. Jack Rosson kicked a 33-yard field goal and sophomore Deon Peters returned a punt 72 yards for a touchdown to give the Admirals a 9-0 first-quarter lead.

Two words best describe the performance of the Annapolis football team at Meade last night: total dominance. The No. 10 Panthers served notice early on both sides of the ball on the way to a 42-0 pounding of the No. 6 Mustangs in the Anne Arundel County season opener. Annapolis rolled up 184 of its 345 rushing yards behind Darius Johnson, Demario Harris and Demario Green to take a 35-0 lead at the half. Johnson (6-foot-2, 215 pounds), a junior running back/linebacker, scored three of the touchdowns.

The Johns Hopkins women's lacrosse team ended its regular season with one of its best second-half efforts yesterday against No. 6 Cornell. Unfortunately for the Blue Jays, it came after one of their worst first halves. The Big Red scored nine straight first-half goals and rode that wave to a 15-8 victory over No. 18 Johns Hopkins at Homewood Field. After a 1-1 tie, the Big Red scored 10 straight goals, including the first of the second half. The Blue Jays rallied midway through the second half but could get no closer than 13-7.

For Mount Hebron's top-ranked girls lacrosse team, spring break had to wait. At 11 o'clock yesterday morning, the Vikings gathered on their field to walk through the game plan for their afternoon contest with No. 3 Bryn Mawr. First-year coach Brooke Kuhl-McClelland wanted her team thinking about the game all day, hoping to avert the tie-game outcome that prevailed a year ago. The plan worked. The host Vikings ran up a seven-goal lead by halftime and cruised to a 14-4 victory, their sixth win over the Mawrtians in eight years.

NEW YORK -- For the UMBC men's basketball team, the craggy climb to the Northeast Conference championship game has been a summit that has proven just beyond its grasp time and time again. Last night, after gaining a tenuous foothold on a seeming berth in the finals with an 11-point halftime lead, the Retrievers again tumbled, falling to seventh-seeded Quinnipiac, 75-72, in the semifinals of the NEC tournament at Wagner College. "We tasted victory, but we couldn't put it away," said sophomore Peter Mulligan, who had a team-high 18 points and nine rebounds as UMBC fell two wins short of an NCAA tournament bid. "We lost our focus a little bit in the last 20 minutes."

Humbled in its meeting with UNC-Wilmington earlier this season, the Towson men's basketball team appeared poised to exact revenge and pull off an upset in last night's rematch. But the Tigers suffered a meltdown on offense in the second half and succumbed to the Seahawks, 56-46, before 903 at the Towson Center. In a matchup pitting the first-place team against the last-place team in the Colonial Athletic Association, Towson (6-13, 2-7), which suffered a 76-37 defeat to UNC-Wilmington on Dec. 30, built a 31-28 halftime lead over the conference leaders on 12-for-21 shooting (57 percent)

With the new year, the Towson University men's basketball team recorded a season's first last night: a halftime lead. Afterward, the Tigers were able to add 20 more solid minutes, putting an end to a four-game slide with a 64-57 win over visiting Delaware State to improve to 4-8 overall and remain perfect at Towson Center at 3-0. Junior guard Brian Allen led a balanced Towson attack, scoring all 15 of his team-high points in the second half to help...

The truth of it was, Pat Beal refused to let it happen again. Too many times, over too many lacrosse seasons, Glenelg had taken Centennial's best punch and never recovered. In the Gladiators' history, they'd only managed to beat the Eagles five times, and No. 6 certainly didn't look promising when Centennial grabbed an early 4-1 lead yesterday. But Beal, an emotionally charged junior attackman, helped lead a furious second-half rally with two goals and two assists as Glenelg knocked off Centennial, 8-6. "This win was so huge for us today," Beal said.

Sharna Gray and Tiffany Moss each scored 14 to power Bowie State past visiting Virginia Union 89-47 in women's college basketball action last night. The Bulldogs (14-3) extended their 13-point halftime lead -- 32-19 -- by shooting 60 percent from the floor to the Panthers' 23.5 percent. Amy Upshaw led the Panthers (5-8) with 11. Villa Julie 63, Mary Baldwin 56: Delana DeShields scored 20 to power the Mustangs past the host Fighting Squirrels in Staunton, Va. Mary Baldwin's Nina Mouzone led all scorers with 26 points.

Unranked Mount Hebron stunned 10th-ranked River Hill with two goals in the first four minutes of the second half on the way to a 4-2 win in girls soccer yesterday.The loss was the Hawks' first in Howard County.Freshman Julie Napolitano scored her second goal in the 30th minute to give Mount Hebron (8-3 overall, 5-1 league ) a 2-1 halftime lead. River Hill (8-3, 5-1) missed a penalty kick just before halftime.Jen Hazel scored off an assist from Katie Elliott two minutes into the second half, and Elliott scored on her own corner kick two minutes later.