Seed

The Hammond Golden Bears last night sent nine wrestlers into today's Class 2A-1A South regional tournament semifinals at Oakland Mills, but coach Pedro Barbosa said he knows the challenges that lie ahead. "We need a little luck and for all our kids to wrestle at their best," he said. "If that happens, we have a chance to win the team title. But the semifinal round is big, and River Hill is in good position. But whether we win the team title or not, every kid here aspires to the state tournament, and my goal is to get them there."

RALEIGH, N.C. -When the final buzzer sounded and top seed Maryland had finally put away fourth seed Vanderbilt, 78-74, in a heart-stopping NCAA Raleigh Regional semifinal Saturday afternoon, senior Marissa Coleman dropped to the RBC Center floor and squatted with her head down for a couple of seconds. The normally exuberant senior forward needed to catch her breath and rest for a moment. "I was exhausted," she said. And with good reason: Coleman played all 40 minutes, scored 42 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and made countless clutch plays in a game in which Maryland trailed by 18 points and didn't take its first lead until 2:17 remained.

Michael Harper scored 17 points, and Tywain McKee converted a three-point play with 24.1 seconds remaining to lift defending champion Coppin State (13-18) to a 66-63 victory over North Carolina A&T (16-16) in the quarterfinals of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament last night in Winston-Salem, N.C. Fifth seed Coppin State advances to play top seed Morgan State in the semifinals today. Women Towson 40, Delaware 37: : Shanae Baker-Brice scored a game-high 12 points with eight rebounds and three steals for the Tigers in the first round of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament in Harrisonburg, Va. The Tigers (17-12)

Can Florida become college basketball's first repeat champion in 15 years? The NCAA thinks so. The Gators were made the top seed in the 2007 tournament by the NCAA men's basketball committee, which selects 34 at-large teams and seeds the 65-team field. Florida was placed there with good reason, as Joakim Noah and four other veteran starters ran their postseason winning streak to 12 games with another Southeastern Conference tournament title yesterday. Coach Billy Donovan's gang did so at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which happens to be the site of this year's Final Four.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Instead of going to sleep at a reasonable hour Wednesday night - the eve of his first NCAA tournament appearance in three seasons - Maryland coach Gary Williams decided to watch first-round tournament upsets on ESPN Classic. The first round, he said, is historically one of the toughest, and yesterday was no exception in the Midwest Regional. No. 4 seed Maryland was forced to fight back - just as it has all season - and escaped HSBC Arena with an 82-70 victory over No. 13 seed Davidson, a gritty, undersized team that proved it had every right to be here.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Duke's uncharacteristic season ended last night with an equally non-traditional exit in the first round of the NCAA tournament, as Virginia Commonwealth made the game-winning shot for a 79-77 upset and halted the Blue Devils' streak of nine straight Sweet 16 appearances. VCU guard Eric Maynor, whose late-game heroics were the reason the Rams beat George Mason to get the Colonial Athletic Association's automatic bid, again played an integral role in his team advancing. This time, his 15-foot jumper with 1.8 seconds remaining propelled Virginia Commonwealth into the second round of the tournament for the first time since 1985.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Maryland women's basketball coach Brenda Frese hasn't shied away from sizable gambles during the Terps' rise to prominence, and in the first game of her team's defense of a national title yesterday, she made perhaps her biggest roll of the dice yet. At the beginning of Maryland's 89-65 win over Harvard in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Frese benched sophomore point guard Kristi Toliver for junior Sa'de Wiley-Gatewood, who...

Can you suggest a small tree for full sun under power lines? I'd prefer a native tree, trouble-free and not susceptible to insects and disease. Canadian Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis), Choke cherry (Prunus virginiana) and sassafras are possibilities. For additional information and a list of native plant nurseries, go to the Maryland Native Plant Society Web site, mdflora.org. I should have aerated and over-seeded in the fall, but I missed the time frame. Is it OK to aerate and over-seed in spring?

The game What -- NCAA women's tournament Fresno Regional first-round game Where -- Hartford (Conn.) Civic Center When -- 9:30 (approximate) TV/Radio -- ESPN2/1370 AM The teams No. 16 seed UMBC -- 16-16; America East tournament champion; first NCAA tournament appearance. No. 1 seed Connecticut --29-3; Big East regular-season champion (16-0); 19th NCAA tournament appearance. The frontcourts Both teams start two players up front and employ a three-guard alignment. UMBC's tallest regular, 6-3 Amanda Robinson (10.3 ppg, 5.3 rpg)

A few slow-moving bugs have shown up in my house. Sometimes they fly a little. They're about 1/2 -inch long and gray-brown. Do I need to spray? Are the hind legs flattened and do they look like a leaf? The body shield-shaped? If so, you've found a type of leaf-footed plant bug. They look very similar to a stink bug. The leaf-footed pine seed bugs in Maryland are prevalent near pine trees. They feed on foliage and live outdoors. When weather turns cold, they may wander into houses looking for areas to overwinter (not breed, eat or cause any harm to people or houses)

Zach Rose is a farmer, not a painter, but he has inadvertently created a brilliant yellow landscape in northern Harford County. His fields of sunflowers have become the talk of the town, a magnet for photographers and a mood-lifter for those who happen upon the cheerful, end-of-summer vista. When Rose planted 600 acres of sunflowers at his White Hall farm in July, he was thinking birdseed. He expects to harvest thousands of pounds of seed around the first of December from the sunflowers now in full bloom.

Horse racing Swift Temper wins $1 million Delaware Handicap Mark Stanley's Swift Temper won the $1 million Grade II Delaware Handicap in front-running fashion at Delaware Park in Wilmington Sunday. Swift Temper earned an automatic berth in the Breeders' Cup Ladies' Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 6 through the Breeders' Cup Challenge series. With Alan Garcia aboard, the 5-year-old daughter of Giant's Causeway won by 2 1/4 lengths after cutting early fractions of :49.83 seconds for a half mile and 1:14.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Eight years and 1,850 miles later, Rocco Romero is where he longed to be. Romero took a circuitous route that began in Denver, was routed through Baltimore and Ithaca, N.Y., and has temporarily come to a stop here. The senior midfielder will try to help the Cornell men's lacrosse team capture its first national title since 1977. To do that, the No. 5 seed Big Red (13-3) must beat No. 2 seed and reigning national champion Syracuse (15-2) in the NCAA tournament final today.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - -If you learned that the NCAA tournament semifinal between top seed Virginia and No. 5 seed Cornell wasn't even close, you probably wouldn't be surprised. The shocker is that it was the Big Red that enjoyed the result. Cornell scored the game's first three goals and six of the first seven to stun the heavily favored Cavaliers, 15-6, before an announced 36,594 at Gillette Stadium on Saturday. The Big Red (13-3) will meet No. 2 seed and reigning national champion Syracuse in the championship final at 1 p.m. Monday.

Maybe the fans were on to something. One of the smallest crowds since the NCAA moved the Final Four to professional venues watched a pair of blowouts in the NCAA tournament semifinals at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., Saturday. In the first semifinal, No. 2 seed and reigning national champion Syracuse thumped No. 3 seed Duke, 17-7. In the second semifinal, No. 5 seed Cornell stunned No. 1 seed Virginia, 15-6. The Orange (15-2) will meet the Big Red (13-3) on Monday at 1 p.m. in the first All-New York championship final since 1988 when Syracuse defeated Cornell, 13-8.

Favorites 7, underdogs 1. For all of the talk about parity in college lacrosse, seven of the top eight seeds in the NCAA tournament advanced to the quarterfinals, and Maryland's 7-3 decision against No. 7 seed Notre Dame was not considered a shocker in some circles. (More on that later.) Of the seven programs that have won national championships in the 38-year tournament history, all seven - Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Virginia, North Carolina, Cornell and Maryland - are still alive.

The Loyola men's lacrosse team has picked up a supporter in its displeasure with being left out of the 16-team NCAA tournament: Johns Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala. While praising the quality of the bracket, Pietramala questioned the selection committee's decision to emphasize significant wins over strength of schedule. "It's obvious that the criteria that this committee used is different than the committee that had been together for the previous two or three years, and it's something that our sport needs to address in terms of consistency," he said.

For the Maryland and Towson women's lacrosse teams, the only suspense in Sunday night's announcement of the NCAA Division I women's championship bracket was who their opponents would be. As one of only two unbeaten Division I teams, the Terrapins figured to draw the No. 2 seed behind four-time defending champion Northwestern, which is also 19-0. That's exactly what happened. In the opener Sunday, Maryland, which earned one of eight automatic bids for winning the Atlantic Coast Conference title, will host another automatic qualifier, Colgate, from the Patriot League.

Towson kept its bid alive for an NCAA Division I playoff spot with a 10-2 victory over visiting Drexel on Wednesday night in a Colonial Athletic Association semifinal game at Johnny Unitas Stadium. No. 2 seed Towson (7-8 overall, 5-2 conference) will host No. 4 Villanova in the conference championship game at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Villanova upset top seed Hofstra, 9-7, in Wednesday night's other semifinal. The winner of the conference championship receives an automatic bid to the 16-team NCAA tournament.

On the road to the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament, Navy and Maryland seem to be going in opposite directions. The No. 12 Midshipmen became the first team to secure a tournament berth by edging No. 14 Bucknell, 9-8, in the Patriot League final Sunday. By capturing the automatic qualifier, the team avoided having to sweat out Selection Sunday, four days away. "We went through that last year, and that's not something we were anxious to repeat," said coach Richie Meade, whose squad was expected to be on the bubble had Navy (11-4)