South Florida

"Detective," by Arthur Hailey. Crown Publishers. 400 pages. $24.In South Florida, anything is possible.It's a place where police officers murder drug dealers for their cash and cocaine. Where Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comaneci turned up after defecting from Romania. Where a church elder and anti-smut civic leader is caught on videotape with a nymphomanic housewife, her police officer husband filming the steamy action from a bedroom closet.It's a place with enough fodder to support dozens of authors, from Elmore Leonard and Edna Buchanan to Carl Hiaasen -- and now, Arthur Hailey.

Maryland will play host to one of college basketball's top transfers this weekend. Evan Smotrycz, a 6-foot-9 forward from Michigan, is scheduled to take an official trip to College Park starting tomorrow. InsideMDSports caught up with the former four-star prospect to talk about his impending visit . “I kind of grew up on Maryland. They were dominant when I was younger and that was always something I had in the back of my mind. " Smotrycz reportedly plans to visit Colorado next weekend and Providence soon after.

Military analogies are inevitable.Norman P. Blake Jr., chairman of USF&G Corp., returned from South Florida on Tuesday evening, shaking his head over the destruction he witnessed from the nation's costliest natural disaster. "It's like in a war zone," he said.Mr. Blake's purpose was to review his troops, boost the morale of a few dozen people working under exhausting conditions and meet with customers whose lives have been disrupted. "I walked away from there saying, 'God, the courage and capacity of these people to maintain their dignity,' " he said in an interview this week.

A week after committing to Maryland, Sam Cassell Jr. 's pledge to the Terps is in doubt. On Sunday, South Florida's 247Sports site tweeted that Cassell said he is not committed to Maryland. ESPN.com also reported Monday that Cassell had withdrawn his pledge to the Terps. Rivals.com's Jerry Meyer tweeted Friday that Cassell will visit South Florida this week and Florida State "some time later. " Meyer said that Cassell is "open" but that "Maryland [is]

The warehouse at the BWI Commerce Park stood dark and empty except for few boxes of Rice Krispies, a 6-pack of Lipton tea bags and few bars of Lux soap.Empty boxes were lined up nearby, ready to be filled with food and hauled to South Florida, which was devastated by Hurricane Andrew.Few people had stopped by to donate goods Saturday morning, but officials with TNT Express Worldwide, an international air express company based in Australia, were optimistic that word would spread."We were sitting around on Thursday and saw just awful pictures of people," said Lisa Hogan, the branch manager for the Hanover office.

Maryland men's basketball assistant coach Dave Dickerson has interviewed for the vacant head coaching job at the University of South Florida, a source at Maryland confirmed yesterday. Dickerson, 36, a 1990 Maryland graduate who played for the Terrapins from 1986 to 1989 and has coached under Gary Williams in College Park for the past seven years, is pursuing his first head coaching job. Dickerson interviewed last month with Clemson, after Larry Shyatt resigned. That job went to former Dayton coach Oliver Purnell.

The coolest sporting event in South Florida this week is the Sony Ericsson Open, the popular pro tennis event in Key Biscayne. The tournament has been spiced up this year with something called Night Tennis, which is basically a glitzy downtown exhibition that features players in glow-in-the-dark clothing competing under black lights on a court that will open up to an all-night party that is free to the public tonight and tomorrow. The tournament is no slouch either, featuring just about every big name in professional tennis.

No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 South Florida. If the Bowl Championship Series national championship were played next weekend, that would be the matchup. The Buckeyes (7-0) and Bulls (6-0) were atop yesterday's release of the first BCS standings with Boston College (7-0) at No. 3. Wow. That pretty much sums up the remarkable debut of the 2007 BCS standings. After yet another weekend of stunning upsets, the Buckeyes and Bulls lead the journey on what's proving to be a crazy, twisting road to the New Orleans Superdome and the Jan. 7 national title game.

Though no longer expected to arrive as a hurricane, Tropical Storm Ernesto still could batter South Florida with up to 10 inches of rain, flooding and wind gusts to 70 mph, starting today and into Thursday, forecasters warned. Tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches remain in effect from Vero Beach south to the Keys, with Ernesto forecast to hit near Homestead, south of Miami, tonight. Then it is expected to churn northward. A flood watch was to be posted by this morning. Initially, the system was forecast to hit the region as a Category 1 hurricane, possibly stronger.

MIAMI -- A transmission glitch at a West Miami power substation knocked out electricity yesterday to as many as 3 million people across the state, halting public transportation, snarling traffic and cutting the air conditioning in homes from Key West to Daytona. Neither crime nor foul play was involved, making the blackout mostly just "a massive inconvenience," Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez said. "It's a matter of just a cascading effect," he said. But on a day when the mercury climbed high into the 80s, the loss of air conditioning and refrigeration in the heart of the workday added to the stress of life in overdeveloped South Florida, already troubled by nightmare traffic and ubiquitous construction.

TODAY'S NCAA MEN ON TV Texas vs. Cincinnati 13, 9Noon N.C. State vs. San Diego State TRUTV12:30 Alabama vs. Creighton TBS1:30 Virginia vs. Florida TNT2 St. Bonaventure vs. Florida State 13, 92:30 Belmont vs. Georgetown TRUTV3 Vermont vs. North Carolina TBS4 Norfolk State vs. Missouri TNT4:30 St. Louis vs....

The first time Chad Simpson imposed his will on a football field was around the age of 12 while he was playing for a Pop Warner youth team in Miami. "He played nose guard, and the coach told him if he got five sacks he could play running back," said Mary Simpson, his mother. "He got his five sacks, and he's been a running back ever since." Simpson's path to the NFL faced bigger roadblocks over the years. That path brought him to Baltimore in 2006, when he transferred from South Florida to Morgan State, and it brings him back Sunday to play for the Indianapolis Colts in a big AFC matchup with the Ravens.

The NCAA is defending the secrecy of its response to the University of Memphis' appeal, saying member schools require confidentiality before a ruling. Memphis has refused to release the NCAA's response to its appeal of a ruling vacating the 2007-08 men's basketball season under an open records request. Memphis cites NCAA rules that prohibit printing the document for media off the association's Web site. An NCAA spokeswoman told the AP on Thursday the association is required to keep infractions case information confidential until a decision is announced.

1 Slow climb: UMBC can move up one spot in the America East standings, into sixth, with a victory over New Hampshire (7 p.m., MASN). 2 'Cats up: Coming off its first Big East loss, at South Florida - where tens of fans rushed the court - Marquette heads to Villanova (7:30 p.m., ESPN2). 3 ACC double dip: Comcast SportsNet-Plus has an Atlantic Coast Conference doubleheader, with Virginia-Florida State at 7 and Clemson-Boston College at 9. 4 Dagger!: Maybe Caron Butler can repeat his end-of-game heroics when the Wizards face the Hawks (7 p.m., Comcast SportsNet)

Top spring break destinations 1 Orlando, Fla. 2 South Florida (West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami) 3 Las Vegas 4 Fort Myers, Fla. 5 Denver 6 Phoenix 7 Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. 8 Cancun, Mexico 9 Los Angeles 10 San Juan, Puerto Rico Based on advance Travelocity.com bookings for Feb. 9- April 20, 2009.

For Ravens fans looking to migrate south for the playoffs, getting tickets to the game wasn't a problem yesterday. But getting to Miami - that's another matter. Thanks to lukewarm Miami fans who don't always fill Dolphin Stadium, some of the Ravens faithful were able to buy tickets at face value on the Ticketmaster Web site yesterday morning. But with the Orange Bowl game in Miami this week, the college football championship game next week and seasonal travelers heading to Florida to thaw out, decent airfare is hard to come by. Many flights out of South Florida on Sunday and Monday, when Ravens fans would be returning home, are full.

Tired of winter and trash sports (i.e., anything but baseball)?Spring training is just around the corner -- on the calendar, at least. Beginning Feb. 28, you can have a sneak preview of the slightly revised, not-quite-American-League-champion Baltimore Orioles as they gear up for the 1998 campaign.Trouble is, you'll have to do it in Florida.But that's not so bad. Figure on temperatures edging upward from the 70s, perhaps closing in on the 90s, as the Orioles swing through nearly the entire month of March in the Sunshine State.

This was to be the season Louisville was going to make its move from up-and-coming to elite, the switch to the watered-down Big East and a favorable schedule providing a nearly unimpeded path for the Cardinals to an undefeated season and their first Bowl Championship Series game. Maybe, if everything fell right, even a shot at a national championship. The question in the 'Ville today is the same as it is in nearby Lexington: When does basketball season start? If Louisville's shaky season-opening performance against the hated Kentucky Wildcats earlier this month wasn't a bad enough sign, then Saturday night's 45-14 loss at South Florida was another sign.

ALVAH H. CHAPMAN JR., 87 Miami newspaperman, civic leader Former Miami Herald president/CEO Alvah H. Chapman Jr., one of South Florida's most influential corporate and civic leaders, whose business acumen and quiet passion helped mold not just the Herald, but modern Miami, died Thursday of pneumonia. Mr. Chapman, a third-generation newspaperman, spent a traditional family Christmas Eve at his Coconut Grove home, reading the Bible with his wife, Betty, their two daughters and several grandchildren, and then died Christmas Day. He was afflicted with Parkinson's disease, suffered strokes in recent years and broke a hip in March.

Mark Sanchez passed for 269 yards and two touchdowns, Southern California's hard-hitting defense stuffed host UCLA at every turn, and the No. 5 Trojans won, 28-7, yesterday to give them nine victories in the past 10 games between the crosstown rivals. The win ensured USC (11-1, 8-1 Pacific-10) of an unprecedented seventh consecutive Bowl Championship Series bid, seven straight 11-win seasons and seven straight conference titles. The Trojans also will make a fourth straight appearance in the Rose Bowl, where they will meet No. 6 Penn State on New Year's Day. The 33-point underdog Bruins (4-8, 3-6)