MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports In all likelihood they will be the final games of the season for the fourth-seeded Maryland men’s and women’s basketball teams when the men take on top-seeded Florida on Thursday and the women take on top-seeded and defending national champion South Carolina on Friday. And, oh, yeah, also Kevin Willard’s…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports What is baseball? Ken Burns wrote in “Baseball,” his masterpiece documentary, “It is played everywhere. In parks and playgrounds and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers’ fields. By small children and old men. Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. “It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Baseball season is so near you can taste it and, in fact, it has been well underway at the local level. Thus, baseball season is here, thank God, which made it quite appropriate to see Steve Bazarnic honored by the NJCAA once more, because no one I have ever known…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports That I, as have many others, picked Florida to win it all in my obligatory NCAA bracket, it stands to reason I picked the Gators to beat Maryland in a potential Sweet 16 matchup, yes? Yes. This season will be a good one for the Terps if they make the…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports One and done. Darian DeVries is going from one program, West Virginia, that got hosed by the NCAA to another program, Indiana, that got hosed by the NCAA as well. Real bad week for West Virginia basketball. What are the odds you would have told a West Virginia fan just…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports From the time I can remember, the Washington Post and the New York Times were in our Cumberland, Maryland home. Every Sunday morning after church our mother would pick them up at Keech’s Pharmacy. Then when my brother and I were old enough to drive, it became our responsibility to…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Historically, this hasn’t been the kindest of times for Maryland basketball, as the Terps open play today, 6:30 p.m., as the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals against No. 7 Illinois. Maryland has won just three of these conference tournaments in its 102-year basketball history, four if…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The New York Yankees will be without their ace Gerrit Cole for the entire 2025 season, as the righthander was scheduled to undergo Tommy John surgery yesterday in Los Angeles. It marked the second consecutive spring with an injury issue for Cole, who was sidelined last March by right elbow…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports This is the second year of no Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament, which in itself still seems surreal. Yet despite understanding the reality of it, for the last three weeks, some of us have found ourselves instinctively following the script from the previous half century – checking the social media feeds…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports On a late Tuesday or Friday night, or whatever the night might be, when we were on deadline in the Cumberland Times-News sports department trying to get our stories filed, it initially seemed that Donnie Gibson was always calling us at the worst possible time, when, in reality, he was…
