Kent State

SAN DIEGO -- By the time Friday's news conference was over, the Cincinnati men's basketball team had had enough of the chiding over its past failures in the NCAA tournament. Four times the Bearcats had earned top-three seeds in the NCAAs, and four times they had been upset in the second round. This wouldn't happen against Kent State. Forward Jamaal Davis hit eight of nine shots for 16 points to go with 10 rebounds as No. 5 seed Cincinnati (25-9) cruised into next week's West Regional semifinals in Anaheim, Calif.

SAN DIEGO - Just when it looked as if No. 4 seed Indiana would end its string of early disappointments in the NCAA tournament, Trevor Huffman stepped in. The junior guard scored 19 of his team-high 23 points in the second half, helping No. 13 seed Kent overcome a 12-point deficit in the second half for a 77-73 victory last night in an NCAA West Regional first-round game. Kent State will face Cincinnati tomorrow in the second round. In the final five minutes, Huffman - whose uncle, Shoes Huffman, played on the 1979 NCAA championship team at Michigan State - made a pair of critical and unlikely shots as the Golden Flashes (24-9)

KENT, Ohio -- It's a brilliant day on campus: the sky is bright, the landscape green, the air a little chillier than you'd like. As you head for the memorial on the hill, you zip your jacket to the top. Here in northeastern Ohio, spring just can't make up its mind to settle in. But you're here to remember, not take leisure. And as anyone at Kent State University can tell you, remembering brings anything but comfort. Thirty years ago today, 28 members of the Ohio National Guard, called to this campus by Gov. James Rhodes, opened fire on a crowd of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine.

WASHINGTON --Whether it is history or nostalgia, or both, news feeds on anniversaries. Last week it was the fall of Saigon 25 years ago. This week it will be the killings at Kent State University in Ohio 30 years ago on May 4, 1970 -- and in my mind that is a far more important event to remember and study. The first mentions of Kent State that I have seen in this wave of anniversary journalism have treated the "incident" as a tragedy, but it was more than that; it was almost a flashpoint in American history, something like John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

Thirty years ago today a 21-year-old journalism student went out on his lunch hour to take pictures on the college campus. He got a photograph that changed his life. It changed the life of the girl in the picture. Some say it changed the world. Rioting, sparked by President Richard M. Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, had torn the Kent State campus over the weekend. The ROTC building was burned, and the mayor of the small Ohio town of Kent had called out the National Guard.

Marjorie Huxley Silver, the raspy-voiced, cigarette-wielding spokeswoman for the University of Maryland at College Park during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, died Thursday of kidney failure at Southern Maryland Hospital in Clinton. She was 81 and lived in Clinton. During the Vietnam War era -- when student disturbances regularly disrupted traffic on U.S. 1, university buildings were occupied and the Maryland National Guard arrived on campus to maintain order in the wake of the Kent State University shootings in 1970, it was the indefatigable Mrs. Silver who had to answer reporters' questions about campus policy or obtain reaction from the university's often-embattled administrators.

WALDORF -- Losses don't come any tougher than this. Winning 28-10 in the state Class 3A-4A Dual Meet finals with two matches to go, River Hill suffered back-to-back pins and fell to undefeated Old Mill, 30-28, before a sparse crowd at Westlake High in Charles County. River Hill (17-1), making its first appearance at states, won seven of the 13 bouts and defeated two of Old Mills' best wrestlers, Antoine Cooksey and Adam DeCosmo, but that wasn't enough to overcome four Old Mill pins. "River Hill was tough down low and they deserved to win as much as anyone," Old Mill coach Vern Hines said.

Kedre Fairley, The Sun's Howard County volleyball Coach of the Year, will not return next season.Fairley's husband, Darryl, has been promoted to a district manager position for Johnson & Johnson, and the family will move to either Wisconsin or Illinois. Also, Fairley is expecting her second child in August. The couple has one son, Nickolas, who will turn 5 in March.Fairley coached at Mount Hebron for three years. Last season's team went unbeaten in county play and was 19-1 overall, losing to eventual Class 2A state champion Centennial in the regionals.

For a guy with a reputation of being a shooter, Kent State's Nate Meers spent yesterday mostly in a daze. Yet even though he was tentative in missing all five of his shots, when Kent State closed to two points behind Loyola in the closing seconds it was Meers who the team looked to for heroics."

For those who wonder how long it will take America to fully recover from the bombing at Oklahoma City 15 days ago, perhaps some lessons can be taken from 25 years ago this day at Kent State.In myriad ways, America has long recovered from the killing of four students on the commons of that northeast Ohio university. Black-and-white pictures from that student showdown with the gas-masked National Guard now seem as distant as daguerreotypes from the Civil War. The nation now has a president who took part in anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.