And to think, just one year ago …

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports What a difference a year makes, huh? For Maryland and West Virginia men’s basketball. At this time last year, both Maryland and West Virginia, while on their way to being bumped from their respective conference tournaments, were still flying sky-high knowing they were sure-fire locks to make it to March…

O’s can only bring 26 players with them

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Don’t look now, but the Baltimore Orioles are currently 14-2 in Grapefruit League play, which is every bit as insignificant as the NFL-record 24-game preseason winning streak of the Baltimore Ravens, yet still seems to make John Harbaugh very proud. Whatever. The Orioles’ preseason success this spring is significant, though,…

Who says you can never go home again?

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ It’s always fun to go back to College Park and particularly to the University of Maryland, even with a bad basketball game sandwiched into the middle of the day. It’s different, of course; the campus has continuously changed since the days when Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were just down…

Neal Brown makes the $400,000 bet

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Alfred, Lord Tennyson — no relation to Alfred, the Butler — once said, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of baseball.” Well, actually, he didn’t say that; I say that, but spring is definitely in the air around here, and you can tell just by…

Caitlin and Pete? Oh, it’s all good

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ Caitlin Clark became the all-time women’s leading scorer in major college basketball Wednesday night by scoring 33 points to pass Lynette Woodard, posting her 17th career triple-double for sixth-ranked Iowa in a 108-60 victory over Minnesota. Clark now has 3,650 career points, while Woodard had 3,649 points for Kansas in…

You have to have a shot to have a shot

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The biggest tell of Maryland’s 68-61 loss to Northwestern on Wednesday night — the biggest tell of the Terps’ entire season — is this: At one point, Northwestern went seven minutes without making a field goal, yet still outscored Maryland 7-0 in that time. Despite playing the best defense in…

Had they not traded Kiner, who knows?

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ We’re in the final two days of February, thank God, spring training is in its second full week and we are 29 days away from Opening Day. It appears there is hope for us after all. Here in Cumberland, we’ve been able to watch some baseball already, as the Baltimore…

A very dangerous port in the storm

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports If you saw the court-storming by the Wake Forest fans on Saturday — and you have; everybody has, because it came at the expense of Duke — you saw Duke star Kyle Filipowski being helped through the mass of humanity by teammates and Duke staff after he was involved in…

As in chess, Queen has the most power

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ Derik Queen, 6-foot-10, 245-pound center for Montverde Academy, the No. 1 high school team in the country, made this disappointing season and the future of University of Maryland basketball far more hopeful by publicly committing to the Terps on Wednesday. A Baltimore native, Queen is an immediate impact player, not…

Sing, everyone sing!

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Yogi Berra said, “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” No, we’re not into Valentine’s Day weirdness here; that was last week, which means it’s still February, which doesn’t sound like much, but when pitchers, catchers and position players have all reported,…