School Basketball

As the 1992-93 high school basketball season gets into full swing today, there is good and bad news for area fans.First, the good news: City public schools can compete for a state championship, after officially joining the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association earlier this year. Matchups such as Lake Clifton against High Point of Prince George's County or Southern against Thomas Johnson of Frederick County could occur in the state finals."Certainly, there will be a true state champion," Milford Mill coach Homer Seidel said of the city schools joining the MPSSAA.

Boys basketball No. School Record Prev. 1. Dunbar 26-2 1 2. St. Frances 33-6 2 3. Milford Mill 26-2 4 4. Mount St. Joseph 31-8 3 5. Edmondson 22-5 5 6. Arch. Spalding 22-12 6 7. John Carroll 26-12 7 8. City 20-6 8 9. New Town 23-4 9 10. Poly 20-7 10 11. Randallstown 19-6 11 12. Oakland Mills 24-1 12 13. Arundel 22-4 13 14. St. Vincent Pallotti 26-6 14 15. Reservoir 19-7 15 Other teams considered: Annapolis (18-8)

In the top 20 high school basketball package in yesterday's editions, Dunbar's Keith James was incorrectly identified as Keith Jones in a photograph, and No. 18 on the list should have been the 1987-1988 Dunbar team that featured seniors Sam Cassell, Kevin Green and Lewis Lambert.The Sun regrets the errors.In the eyes of the nation, Baltimore high school basketball arrived one cold February afternoon in 1973 when Dunbar upset DeMatha High of Hyattsville, 85-71, at the Baltimore Civic Center.

Dec. 10, 2000: A 24-3 defeat of the San Diego Chargers earns the Ravens their first NFL postseason berth. Trent Dilfer passes for two touchdowns for host Baltimore (10-4), which wins its fifth straight game and will win six more. "The playoffs are great," safety Kim Herring says, "but we want it all. " Dec. 13, 1980: A dismal shooting night dooms fourth-ranked Maryland, which falls at defending NCAA men's basketball champion Louisville, 78-67 before a national television audience.

Today I have decided to sally forth into an area where the media seldom go. I'll try to actually write something positive for a change.I'll call this column "Kudos and Raspberries." The kudos are praises for people who deserve them. The raspberries are razzes, boos and hisses for those who don't, because this simply wouldn't be a media column without something bad being in it.First on the kudos list is Charlotte Wing Brown, the principal of Baltimore's Dunbar High School. Last week, Dunbar's basketball team lost the city championship to Douglass High School.

Free clinic -- Hall of Fame coach Morgan Wootten (above) and his son, Bishop O'Connell High School coach Joe Wootten, will lead a free basketball clinic from 12:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. Feb. 17 at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City. Admission is free, and registration is not required. The first part of the clinic will focus on drills and fundamentals for younger players and includes player participation. The second part of the clinic will focus on preparing middle school players for high school basketball.

CLEVELAND - Bill Walton recalled a high school game he played in more than 30 years ago in San Diego. It received lots of hype and was televised locally. After all, Walton was considered the best high school basketball player in the country. "But it wasn't anything like this," Walton said, shaking his head and looking around the Cleveland Convocation Center. Then again, as good as Walton was back then, he wasn't LeBron James. James, the 17-year-old phenom from nearby Akron, was the reason Walton asked to work for ESPN2 during last night's nationally televised game between St. Vincent-St.

Starting his second season on varsity, Edgewood's Ed Jones transferred after his sophomore year from Charlotte, N.C., where he lived with his grandmother, to reside with his mother in Edgewood. Jones, 6 feet 3, played a major role last season in the Rams' 19 victories, averaging 10 points. He is adjusting to a new coach, Lamont Pennick. How is the team responding to the new emphasis on fundamentals and discipline? We're doing good. It's a little different from last year, but we're adjusting to it. The main difference is the team.

Not long ago, talk about values was mainly left to politicians on the far right and to fundamentalist Christians, most of whom were dismissed as zealots and demagogues. Now that the issue of values is coming into the mainstream, there seems no shortage of examples illustrating a need to retrieve the Golden Rule.The Tonya Harding case, fascinating potboiler that it is, is all the more interesting for the tug-of-war it represents between crass commercialism and good sportsmanship, not to mention plain right and wrong.

In Baltimore City Run/walk Sunday to benefit victims of South Asia tsunamis A run/walk is scheduled for Sunday at the Inner Harbor to benefit victims of the tsunamis in Asia. Participants may choose between a 4- and 10-mile course, depending on their abilities. Runners will meet at 9:30 a.m. at the Korean War Memorial park in Canton. The race, sponsored by the Fells Point Runners club, is free but participants are encouraged to raise donations from friends and family for the Red Cross.

Domestic assault charges against high school basketball standout Aquille Carr will be dropped if he completes a 22-week program with the House of Ruth, his attorney said. Carr, a senior and one of the better known names in high school basketball for his electrifying play, appeared in court Wednesday morning to stand trial on charges that he struck the mother of his child during an argument last month. But prosecutors agreed to place the case on the inactive docket on the condition that he completes a program with the House of Ruth, according to his attorney, Ivan J. Bates.

Aquille Carr, a star basketball guard at Patterson High School whose electrifying play earned him the nickname "Crimestopper," was released from jail late Saturday after being arrested on a domestic assault charge. Carr, 18, a 5-foot-6 point guard who was The Baltimore Sun's two-time All-Metro Player of the Year, is accused of throwing his former girlfriend to the ground outside a Southeast Baltimore trade school and kicking and punching her, records show. The rising senior announced in January that he had committed to play basketball at Seton Hall in the 2013 season.

If Baltimore City schools and Basketball Academy officials have their way, the popular event will return to a college campus next year. Because of NCAA regulations banning "nonscholastic" high school basketball events from Division I college campuses, this week's 16 t h Annual Basketball Academy had to be moved from Coppin State to Lake Clifton. Basketball Academy officials, however, believe their event is a scholastic event. "I feel very confident we'll be back on a college campus," said Bob Wade, coordinator of athletics for the Baltimore City Public Schools.

As the youngest of three athletic sisters, Jasmine Hill picked up a lot of pointers along the way to her stellar high school basketball career. Her first two seasons at Oakland Mills, she played with Nicole, now 19 and playing at East Stroudsburg, while Vanessa, 22, graduated before she arrived. She started playing in the Columbia Basketball Association recreation league at 5. Voted the Howard County Player of the Year last season by the coaches, Hill scored her 1,000 t h career point in December.

Officials from Baltimore City Public Schools are investigating a brawl that took place at a high school basketbal game Wednesday night in west Baltimore. According to reports, dozens of police officers were called to ConneXions School For The Arts on Wednesday night to respond to a fight during the school's game against Cardozo of Washington, D.C. Video of the incident shows both players and fans involved in the melee. Baltimore City Public Schools Police deferred comment to schools spokeswoman Edie House-Foster, who released the following statement: "Baltimore City Public Schools expects spectators and student athletes to exhibit excellent sportsmanship at all times.

He was supposed to be in Florida right now, prepping with his teammates for a weekend basketball showcase. Instead, the team flew south Thursday afternoon without their 6-foot 5-inch forward, who was a "beast" on the court, his brother said. "He had french fry fingers," Walter Rogers, 19, said of his little brother, Marcus Harvell. His fingers were so long and skinny, he could grip a basketball just with his fingertips, he said. Basketball was his life. Harvell, 18, was a city basketball standout.

In 1989, he was a skinny freshman in glasses, full of potential. The next year, he displayed maturity under pressure for one of nation's top teams and was rewarded with a spot on The Baltimore Sun's All-Metro squad.His junior season was spent doing the dirty work under the boards while Michael Lloyd and Donta Bright received the accolades for a national championship squad.Accepting different roles has been easy for Dunbar's Keith Booth, The Baltimore Sun's All-Metro Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

It's easy to pick out the surprise in the girls basketball ranks. There's only one team in the Top 10 that you will find no mention of on last month's preview page: Mercy. Of course, I should have known better than to discount coach Mary Ella Marion and her Magic. One of the area's best coaches, she gets the most out of her girls in a program that, these days, rarely draws the best of the best area players. The No. 10 Magic is 10-2 with its success built a little differently from most other top teams.