Play Basketball

Mount Hebron's Rachel Cimmier has signed a national letter of intent to play basketball at the University of Maryland next fall.The 6-foot-2 French exchange student earned second-team All-Metro and first-team All-Howard County honors in her only season with the Vikings."

It was a September day in 2007 and Seth Allen was riding his bicycle around his suburban Virginia neighborhood the same way he now plays basketball for Maryland - with speed and flair, but also a hint of youthful recklessness. Allen wasn't holding on to the 10-speed's handlebars when he hit a rough patch of pavement and lost control, tumbling off the bike and shattering his left elbow in so many places that doctors had to insert two plates and 24 screws to stabilize the joint. Five and a half years later, the screws and plates remain in the freshman guard's shooting elbow along with the memory of surgeries, painkillers and months of rehabilitation during which his athletic future was clouded.

I started when I moved to the East Coast. I used to live in California and I came here in my sixth-grade year. I never picked up a ball when I was in California. Then I played for my middle school team [in Virginia]. Were you good at it to start? Yeah. It was kind of like it just came naturally to me. My dad played basketball in his years in high school, so I guess it was just natural. What was the transition like to Lansdowne's team? Coming to Lansdowne, I felt more comfortable here than I did at North County.

C.J. Keyser, a 6-foot-3 sophomore small forward who transferred from John Carroll to Patterson Mill last week, has not yet been ruled eligible to play basketball for the Huskies. Patterson Mill athletic director Jason Bellamy said there was no update on whether Keyser would be declared eligible for the upcoming Class 2A East region playoffs. The Huskies are set to travel to Edgewood in tonight's opening round and Bellamy said Keyser was not a member of the team.

Pennsylvania@Drexel 10 a.m. [ESPN] I look at it this way: If these two teams are going to play basketball in the middle of the morning, the least you can do is watch. Plus, given that their campuses are next to each other, maybe parking spaces are on the line.

Cory McNeill, a second-team All-Metro point guard for Mount St. Joseph, will play basketball at Morgan State.McNeill, 6 feet 1, 165 pounds, had averages last season of 15.5 points, 4.0 assists, 2.0 steals, and 3.0 rebounds.Pub Date: 6/25/97

Pressure? What pressure? "There is no pressure. That's what makes it so much fun," Katelyn Hoffman said. "We basically play for the fun of it, for the love of the game." Hoffman plays for the senior Blue Angels, an independent travel basketball team made up of high school students. Phil Straw, a Howard County resident, coaches the squad as well as an eighth-grade Blue Angels team. This year's senior Blue Angels team has 10 players, six from Howard County. Three players are from Mount Hebron -- Hoffman, Kate Story and Katie Zabel.

BOSTON -- Boston Celtics captain Reggie Lewis is expected to undergo surgery, possibly this weekend, to have an implantable defibrillating device placed under the muscles of his abdomen, raising the possibility that he may play basketball again, The Boston Globe learned last night.Until last night, medical sources generally had assumed that Lewis would not play basketball again because of the serious heart arrhythmia that caused him to collapse and nearly lose consciousness during a playoff game April 29.But implantation of the defibrillator, which can quickly restore an erratic heart rhythm to normal, "raises the hope that he can play again," said one source close to the case.

Aleksandar Pavlovic calls himself a virtual "runaway" from his home in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, four years ago to study and play basketball one year at Archbishop Spalding High School. "It took me five months to convince my parents to let me come here," said Pavlovic who is now a junior standout at Division II Shippensburg University. "It's safe to say they didn't want me to leave home. Things weren't that good back home when I left." But Pavlovic, 17, had an endless thirst for knowledge, and he would not be satisfied until he was enrolled at Spalding.

Victoria Green, Walbrook SPORT BASKETBALL GIRLS STATS -- The 5-foot-5 senior guard is one of the metro area's top scorers, averaging 23.9 points. She scored 29 in Friday's 74-35 win at Carver. Green, who wants to play basketball in college, has played Amateur Athletic Union basketball since she was 9 and played last summer for the Maryland Heat. She is also the starting shortstop on the Warriors' softball team. SIDELINES -- Green has been active in student government at Walbrook and served as class president in the 10th grade.

Heat impressive Shandel Richardson Sun Sentinel The Knicks are the league's only unbeaten team. But the team playing the best is the Heat. It sounds silly to say when the Knicks spanked the Heat last week, but no team has been more impressive than Miami. The Heat are leading the league in scoring, which is trouble for the rest of the NBA. Erik Spoelstra will have his team returning to its defensive identity soon as Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis adjust. Now, the league's best defensive team has an offense that has proved difficult to defend.

Golf Hutsell leads by 2 at MAPGA Pro tourney     David Hutsell , PGA director of instruction at The Elkridge Club, closed with four straight birdies Monday to take a two-shot lead in the Middle Atlantic PGA Professional Championship in Williamsburg, Va. Hutsell, the defending champion in the event, shot an 8-under-par 64 on the Woods course at Kingsmill Resort. "I really focused on practicing my short game before coming to Kingsmill," said Hutsell, who missed only one fairway and one green in regulation.

As Terrell Suggs attempts to come back after successful surgery to repair his partially torn right Achilles tendon, there remains scrutiny over how the Ravens' outside linebacker sustained the injury in the first place. Two days after Suggs told my colleague Mike Preston that he is "going to shock a lot of people" with a healthy return from the injury sometime during the regular season, ESPN's Adam Schefter reported again that Suggs was injured in late April while playing basketball in Arizona, something Suggs had strongly denied to us . Schefter had two employees of the gym in Arizona saying on the record that Suggs was injured playing in a tournament.

Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher is plenty busy with the football season, so he hasn't really gotten a chance to see his adoptive brother, Sean Tuohy Jr., play basketball much. But that figures to change soon. Tuohy, a senior Briarcrest Christian School, has committed orally to play basketball at Loyola University beginning next season. “It's big," Oher said. "I get to go to most of the home games, just to see him play. I didn't get a chance to watch him in high school much so I get a chance to watch him a lot more, especially if he's coming up here to play.

Moviegoers who saw Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher's saga depicted in the "The Blind Side" recall Sean Tuohy Jr. as the future football star's rambunctious little brother who interrogated big-time college coaches when they came to the family's Memphis, Tenn., home on recruiting trips. Tuohy is now a senior at the same private high school where Oher was discovered, and a pretty good basketball player - good enough to earn a scholarship at Loyola University, where Tuohy has committed orally to play beginning next season.

A 21-year-old man was shot in the face and shoulder in Northeast Baltimore while playing basketball Sunday afternoon, police said. The victim was playing ball on the rear side of the 5200 block of Loch Raven Blvd. when he heard yelling, followed by gunshots, said Detective Kevin Brown, a spokesman for city police. He was driven to an area hospital and arrived about 1 p.m., which is when officers were called. Brown did not have any information about the victim's condition or a possible motive in the shooting.

Jared Gaither, 21, is set to make his second career start at left offensive tackle Sunday against the Buffalo Bills. But the football phenom was a two-sport star who still yearns to play basketball. You were a Division I recruit in basketball who had orally committed to South Carolina before deciding to concentrate on football. Do you miss basketball? Yeah. We have guys like Chad [Steele, the team's director of media relations who was a power forward at Winthrop] who think they can play basketball.

Throughout her brilliant, but controversial basketball career, Tammy Brown has shown the ability to switch directions almost as quickly as she can switch hands on the dribble.In the latest switch, Brown, an All-Metro selection and the 1990 Anne Arundel County Player of the Year at Broadneck High, has come full circle, signing a letter of intent to play at Maryland next season two years after leaving there."I always wanted to play in the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference]. If I could stay at home and play for a top-five program, I figured, 'Why not?

There was a time, many years ago, when Chris Carr did not particularly care if his football career ended. He doesn't mind talking about it. Carr finds it fascinating, in fact, to contemplate the role that fate played in steering him toward the present. You can make a pretty convincing case that he's been the Ravens best cornerback this season, and that he's exceeded everyone's expectations this year — except his own — with how consistently he's played. But getting here required a bit of random luck both the Ravens and Carr can be thankful for. Carr was a high school senior in Reno, Nevada, when it happened.

Brendan Timothy Sullivan, a college student who enjoyed sports and music, died Monday of a cardiac arrest at his Marriottsville home. He was 19. Mr. Sullivan was born in Silver Spring and spent his early years in Hyattsville before moving to Marriottsville in 1999. He was a 2008 graduate of West Nottingham Academy in Colora, where the 6-foot-9-inch player was the varsity basketball team's center. His athletic prowess earned him the school's Best Male Athlete Award. At the time of his death, Mr. Sullivan was studying business at Howard Community College and the University of Phoenix.