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For a team reduced to half its original size before yesterday's tip-off against visiting Hampton, winless Morgan State acquitted itself fairly well - for a little while. By the time the Pirates, especially senior guard Jeff Granger, got warmed up in the first half, Morgan State was reeling. Once Hampton turned up the tempo in the second half, the Bears were all but finished. Behind Granger's game-high 21 points, Hampton took advantage of a Morgan State team decimated by academic ineligibility and discipline problems, and blew out the Bears, 80-49, in a Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference game at Hill Field House.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- When Morgan State played Hampton during the regular season, the Pirates frolicked to two victories by 31 and 33 points. It was an entirely different game at the RBC Center last night, but the Bears still couldn't find enough talent or scoring punch to overcome the difference and lost to Hampton again, 63-51, in the opening round of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament. Unlike the first two meetings, Morgan (4-26) made a game of this one. It led by seven points after playing a near-flawless first half and was still tied at 48 with 6 1/2 minutes to play before going cold.

Big men from Baltimore could play a major role in the NCAA basketball tournament. Two of the No. 1 seeds, Connecticut and Memphis, have Josh Boone and Joey Dorsey, respectively, patrolling the middle. The Huskies' leading scorer is Rudy Gay, a 6-foot-9 sophomore forward who's well-positioned to add his name to the list of locals who have placed their stamp on March Madness. For a generation, Baltimore was synonymous with scrappy perimeter players. Juan Dixon willed Maryland to a 2002 NCAA title, Sam Cassell is still enjoying a fine NBA career that includes a world championship ring, and Muggsy Bogues is the shortest man ever to play in the league.

WASHINGTON -- Andre Agassi sat in a comfortable chair inside a white tent at the William H.G. Fitzgerald Tennis Center yesterday afternoon with sweat sliding down the side of his face. The white-hot sun combined with the bright lights of a dozen television cameras made the setting less than comfortable for the sport's veteran star, who is retiring after the coming U.S. Open. But Agassi, his clean-shaven head glistening, showed no sign that he even noticed, as he patiently answered questions about his career and his last appearance at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, a tournament he has won five times in 16 previous appearances.

Towson Catholic junior forward Carmello Anthony scored 18 points to lead the No. 5-ranked Owls to a 54-46 win over No. 17 St. Frances yesterday in a Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference semifinal at the University of Baltimore. The Owls (24-6) will take on Archbishop Spalding - a 42-40 winner over McDonogh in yesterday's other semifinal - in the championship game set for 8 p.m. Saturday at Gilman. Anthony - who scored 15 of his points in the second half, added 13 rebounds and had all four of his team's blocked shots - said a factor was slowing the game down.

The top -ranked Douglass boys basketball team remained perfect, getting 30 points from Tyler Smith and a near triple double from senior center Richard Dorsey in a 92-64 win over No. 8 Southern in a Baltimore City game. Smith, a senior guard, hit four three-pointers to go along with five assists and four steals to lead Douglass (22-0, 9-0). Dorsey had 14 points, eight blocks and 10 rebounds, while junior guard Gerald Brown scored 18 points. Douglass started quickly, taking a 21-10 lead after one quarter and building a 43-29 halftime lead.

A youthful Coppin State men's basketball team broke the Hampton hex last night by showing impressive composure in a game that could have gone either way, and as a result, the Eagles have climbed into second place in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Coppin State overcame a major size advantage enjoyed by the visiting Pirates, tightened its defense, made critical free throws down the stretch, and rode a 20-point night by sophomore reserve guard Darryl Roberts to a 72-65 victory at Coppin Center.

With its measly 1.44 megabytes of storage capacity, the 3.5-inch diskette is an anachronism in a world of 20-gigabyte MP3 players, DVD burners and tiny memory cards that can hold hundreds of digital photos. Yet like a lingering party guest who hasn't realized that it's time to go home, it somehow holds on as a form of removable storage. Diskette drives are still found on most computers, even though few people make much use of them. According to Disk/Trend, a company in Mountain View, Calif.

If you want the hipness of SoHo without the three-hour drive or the hassles of New York, check out Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood. Just 90 minutes away, Old City is a lively place full of galleries, shops, restaurants, bars, cafes and loft apartments. In a way, Old City is actually more hip than SoHo, which is now overrun with chains like J. Crew and Banana Republic. The first wave of artists started moving into the area's old warehouses in the late-'70s, when space was cheap and available.

The second-ranked Archbishop Spalding boys basketball team outscored host McDonogh 15-5 in the second quarter and pulled away in the second half for a 55-46 Baltimore Catholic League victory last night over the No. 9 Eagles. Down four after the first quarter, the Cavaliers (20-4, 8-2 BCL) switched to a half-court trap that stifled the Eagles (14-8, 5-6), holding them without a field goal in the second quarter. "The half-court trap changed the momentum," said Spalding coach Mike Glick.