Playing At Home

NBA games lost yesterday: 1.Total games missed: 167.Earliest estimated date that season can start: Jan. 1.Projected player salary losses (through Jan. 1): $330 million.Negotiations: A session scheduled for Saturday has been canceled.Today's best canceled game: Houston at Indiana. The only game scheduled, keeping up the Pacers' tradition of playing at home on Thanksgiving night.Pub Date: 11/26/98

City had brief spurts of quality offense and defense in the first half of Thursday's Class 3A North quarterfinal boys basketball game against Digital Harbor, but the Knights were unable to put everything together to shake the visiting Rams. The second half was different. With swift ball movement on offense and pressure on defense, the No. 8 Knights methodically broke down Digital Harbor for a 70-52 win to advance to the regional semifinals. City, which improved to 19-5 on the season, will return to its home court Tuesday to take on Aberdeen, which beat Hereford, 59-33, on Thursday.

On the Ravens- Cincinnati Bengals Game This game scares me, as Cincy is playing at home and everything is on the line for them. If they lose to the Ravens, then they will have a tough time making the playoffs. How arrogant are the Bengals? You would have thought the Bengals won a Super Bowl or something. The whole thing boils down to the Ravens' secondary and pressuring [Carson] Palmer. ... If Palmer has time, he will chew the D up.

Since making his stunning comeback from a partially torn right Achilles tendon suffered in April, Terrell Suggs has totaled eight tackles, one sack and one batted pass in two games. But both of those games were on the road against the Houston Texans on Oct. 21 and the Cleveland Browns on Sunday. So the outside linebacker and reigning NFL Defensive Player of Year could expect a raucous reception when he steps onto the field at M&T Bank Stadium this Sunday for the first time in 2012.

Glenelg's girls basketball coach Randy Wallenhorst and Wilde Lake's girls assistant varsity coach Don Storr sat next to each other during Sunday's drawing for the open state tournament. Kelly Storr, the head coach at Wilde Lake, sat one row behind them."Don and I were talking, and we said that if we sit next to each other there's no way we were going to get matched up, and look what happened," said Wallenhorst.Glenelg was picked No. 8. The eighth team would play host to No. 9 in the opening round.

Towson State has the best record, a first-round bye and home-court advantage. Delaware has the best athletes and the longest winning streak. UMBC has a streak of superstition.It will be a curious mix of motivation when the East Coast Conference tournament begins tomorrow at Towson Center. Towson is pegged as the heavy favorite to repeat as champion, but almost every team brings something to the table.Take UMBC, for example. Two weeks ago, the Retrievers were a puny 2-21. Then, abracadabra, they win four in a row. Coach Earl Hawkins pinned the turnaround on players finding their "niche" in the system.

The Spirit is happy to be home.Four straight road losses will make any indoor soccer team homesick, especially in March, when the National Professional Soccer League stages its version of the pennant race.The Spirit (22-9), which has lost only one home game this season, leads the second-place Cleveland Crunch (21-10) by one game heading into their game tonight at the Baltimore Arena.A Spirit victory would help alleviate some of the pressure the team will face as it plays six of its final nine games outside of the Arena.

VERNDON, Va. "Didn't Dorothy say there's no place like home?" Darrell Green asked. "What do you mean, which Dorothy?"He was quoting the Kansas kid as she was finding the road wasn't easy, even when it's paved with yellow bricks.The question was why the Washington Redskins should be three-point favorites when they meet the Miami Dolphins in RFK Stadium on Sunday. (Coaches pay no attention to such venal concerns, but one assistant admitted being "flabbergasted.")On what do these 6-5 Redskins feed that they should bestride a 9-2 opponent?

CHICAGO -- When Scottie Pippen passed him on the Chicago Stadium basketball floor during media interview sessions Tuesday afternoon, Phoenix Suns forward Charles Barkley yelled at his Bulls rival and former Olympic teammate, "Hey, Scottie, want to go with me to dinner in Phoenix next week?""Sorry, Charles, but we ain't going back to Phoenix," Pippen replied with a sly smile.It was Pippen's warning that the defending champion Bulls, leading the best-of-seven NBA Finals, 2-1, would wrap up the series with victories in games 4 and 5 on their home court.

Navy basketball coach Don DeVoe heaved a sigh of relief Sunday when he won a coin toss with Lafayette that gave his team home-court advantage throughout the Patriot League men's tournament, while the Leopards received a first-round bye.The second-seeded Midshipmen (16-10) will face seventh-seeded Army (8-18) in the opening game at Alumni Hall at 11 a.m. tomorrow.Navy will have to win three games to repeat as league champions and gain an automatic NCAA berth, but the Mids have to like the odds after having won 23 of their past 26 home games.

The Orioles have known since Sunday night that they were playoff-bound. On Wednesday night, they finally learned whom they'll play. The club will begin its first postseason in 15 years at 8:37 p.m. Friday in Arlington, Texas, where the Orioles will have to win a wild-card game against the Rangers to keep their season alive. If the Orioles win Friday night, they'll begin the American League Division Series at home Sunday against the New York Yankees. The Orioles cost themselves home-field advantage in the wild-card round with a 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night, surrendering three home runs to third baseman Evan Longoria.

A new TV game show, "Let's Ask America," has an open casting call in Bel Air this Friday, July 27. Contestant hopefuls must be 18 or older to apply and can try out for the show at the Harford County Farm Fair (608 Tollgate Road, Bel Air) from 3 to 8 p.m. The show, with host Kevin Periera, is a new daily, half-hour game show where contestants compete for cash prizes from the comfort of their own home. Each contestant will tune in for the game show via web chat. "Let's Ask America" asks America interesting, quirky and unique questions.

For Jana Hunter, the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter of rising Baltimore band Lower Dens, album release dates typically mean anxiety and, once they're over, relief. But on the morning her group's second album, "Nootropics," hit stores, she said this day felt different. "I'm very excited about it," Hunter said earlier this week. "I feel like a little kid celebrating a birthday or something. " It's a feeling the members of Lower Dens have earned. After the band released its critically acclaimed debut album, "Twin-Hand Movement," in 2010, the group toured beyond the point of exhaustion, leading to member departures and panic attacks.

Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia made no secret about who he thought should win Maryland's 2010 gubernatorial campaign. It wasn't Martin O'Malley. Yet two months after O'Malley, a Democrat, sailed to victory, McDonnell showed up in Annapolis to attend the inauguration. Virginia's governor even praised the man he worked to defeat, calling O'Malley "a very smart guy" who "obviously had a record of accomplishments. " McDonnell's decision to extend the olive branch — and O'Malley's to take it — underscores a relationship between the two men that aides say has been cordial, even friendly at times.

On March 12, thousands of lacrosse fanatics will filter through the gates of M&T Bank Stadium for the Face-Off Classic, eager to watch a triple header where each game could have the feel of an NCAA Tournament semifinal. The event is expected to generate significant revenue for the city, promote the game to a larger audience, and serve as a de facto celebration for a sport that continues to grow on a national stage. Playing a regular season contest in front of a large audience in an NFL stadium seems, at first blush, to be a no-lose situation.

Politicians may be too chicken to fix Social Security's financial problems, but what about you? Can you make the politically tough decisions to shore up the system? Find out by playing the Social Security Game, created by the American Academy of Actuaries. The online game ( www.actuary.org/socialsecurity/game.html) gives potential fixes and the pros and cons of each option. For instance, raise the age to get full retirement benefits to 70 by 2030, and all of Social Security's solvency problems are cured.

PHILADELPHIA -- Football's regimented traditions dictate an enforced togetherness. Even teams playing at home spend the night before games in hotels. So late Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours before they would play the despised Cowboys, the Eagles gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in Center City.Things proceeded in typically relaxed fashion. Players and coaches ate a meal of pasta, chicken and salad, then splintered into smaller groups for position sessions. Finally, at about 8:30, all the Eagles converged on a hotel ballroom for the final act of their work week, a team meeting.

John Carroll School, expected to be among the top challengers for the Maryland Scholastic Association A Conference boys soccer championship, got an up-close look at the defending champion last Thursday and was not overwhelmed by it.Calvert Hall (2-0), The Sun's second-ranked team, broke away from a 1-0 lead with two goals midway through the second half and defeated the Patriots, 3-0, but the visitors (3-2) came away believing they could play with the winners.This had not been the case in recent years, as the Cardinals had won five of the previous six meetings.

It may not matter once the postseason starts, but Week 15 had a curious feel of the NFL playoff field drawing tighter. Put another way, the predestined Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys suddenly doesn't look so automatic. The unbeaten Patriots, playing at home in their kind of elements, looked less than perfect in a 20-10 win over the lowly New York Jets. Sure, driving rain and gusting winds contributed to Tom Brady's poorest game of the season (14 completions, no touchdown passes)

Did the Milwaukee Brewers really put retaliation ahead of a division race last week? They'll never admit it, but the rest of the baseball world has its suspicions. Trailing by a run against St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, the Brewers saw the game slip away in the eighth inning. They allowed four runs during a rally that began when Milwaukee reliever Seth McClung apparently hit Albert Pujols as payback for Prince Fielder being drilled in the second. The Brewers lost, 7-3, preventing them from sweeping the Cardinals.