Maryland

Crystal Langhorne, The Inquirer's South Jersey girls' basketball player of the year and a two-time first-team all-South Jersey selection, has made an oral commitment to Maryland. The 6-foot-2 Langhorne chose the Terrapins over Connecticut, Virginia and Florida. She became the second highly touted frontcourt player to commit to the Terrapins. Laura Harper, a 6-3 center from Cheltenham High in Southeastern Pennsylvania, gave an oral commitment to the Atlantic Coast Conference team.

Midfielder Drew Snider scored three goals and goalie Niko Amato led a solid defensive effort and Maryland upset second-seeded Johns Hopkins, 10-4, in Annapolis, Md., on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament. Midfielders John Haus and Mike Chanenchuk scored two goals each for Maryland (11-5), which advanced to the semifinals for the second straight season as an unseeded team. It will be the 21st Final Four appearance for the Terrapins, who lost in the national championship game last season.

Charles Briggs of Cave's Valley Country Club near Baltimore finished first among the professionals yesterday with a 2-under-par 70 in the pro-member golf tournament of the Philadelphia PGA. The tourney was played at Berkleigh Country Club near Reading. John Allen of Sunnybrooke Golf Club finished second with a 72. Dave Roberts of Cedarbrook Country Club was third with a 73. Ben Lesniak of Llanerch Country Club combined with Jack Bearon, Sam Bub and Jack Perlman to win the pro-member event with a two-best-ball score of 11-under-par 133.

Haddonfield senior Greg Halla liked a lot of things about the University of Maryland track program. Especially the Terrapins' pending move to the Big Ten Conference. "That was the big thing for me," said Halla, who has committed to attend Maryland on a partial athletic scholarship. "It's exciting to think about the opportunity to run in the Big Ten. " Maryland, a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, is scheduled to join the Big Ten in 2014. Halla is a standout distance runner at Haddonfield.

The unseeded Maryland men's lacrosse team reached the NCAA championship game with a 16-10 semifinal victory over third-seeded Duke on Saturday in Foxborough, Mass. Drew Snider tied his career high with four goals and Owen Blye added three goals for the Terrapins (12-5). Maryland put away the Blue Devils (15-5) with a run of six straight goals after Duke took a 10-8 lead early in the fourth quarter. Maryland finished with 29 shots and scored the most goals Duke has allowed this season.

Gloucester Catholic baseball pitcher Mike Shawaryn committed to the University of Maryland on a full scholarship on Friday. Shawaryn had narrowed his choices to Duke and Maryland before making the decision. He also was recruited by Vanderbilt, Louisiana State, and Stony Brook. "It was a mixture of a gut feeling, and you can't explain it - I just felt a sense of comfortability down there," Shawaryn said. "I'm excited to be part of the program. " The 6-foot-2 righthander suffered a season-ending injury to a ligament in his right elbow last year.

Brian Gaia, a two-way lineman from Maryland, has verbally committed to play football at Penn State. Gaia, 6-3, 287 pounds, is a junior at the Gilman School in Baltimore. He is the seventh recruit to commit to the Nittany Lions. Gaia was an All-Metro pick on the offensive line by the Baltimore Sun , but he was recruited by defensive line coach Larry Johnson to play defensive tackle. Gaia also had offers from Iowa, Michigan, Rutgers, Tennessee and West Virginia, among others.

PENNSYLVANIA couldn't dominate a state roughly its same size in the Big 33 Football Classic over the last 19 years, and now it's back to a tiny one. Goodbye Ohio. Hello again, Maryland. Big 33 officials announced the change Wednesday, as well as the fact that it will occur for 2013. Pennsy (roughly 46,000 square feet) had met Ohio (45,000) in the last 19 games, going 9-10 and losing the last three. The opponent was Maryland (12,500) in the previous eight games and Our Guys kicked tail in that rivalry, 6-2. The Big 33, featuring the top seniors in the state (though, more and more kids are opting not to play, sometimes due to pressure from their chosen colleges)

Perhaps the opening weekend is a lousy indicator of what lies ahead for college football teams. Coaches will tell you that it's simply a starting point - nothing more and nothing less. That's the message Temple's Steve Addazio is trying to get across to his players. "I tell the team all the time, 'Watch out. Watch out for that stuff now,' " he said of first impressions. "You can't tell. You really can't tell. It's too fragile right, now. You get a pretty good read on a team around the middle of the season.

  Las Vegas has casinos in a desert. Atlantic City has casinos by the ocean. But the operators of Maryland's spectacularly successful casino about 15 miles south of Baltimore, Maryland Live, knew where they wanted to put theirs - in a shopping mall parking lot. So far, the move has paid off huge for both the casino and the adjacent Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Md., as the two have combined to form arguably Maryland's single biggest-drawing destination....

WHAT IS NOW Ocean City, Md., was discovered by explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. But its modern history dates to the 1870s, when a group of investors established the beach resort. Among those backers were several Philadelphians whose contributions are apparently saluted in the name of the town's main drag, Philadelphia Avenue. A landmark dating back to that era is the Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum, on the Boardwalk's southern end at 1st Street, in a two-story building that originally housed the local headquarters of the forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Penn State picked up its eighth verbal commitment to the freshman Class of 2014 on Friday when Marcus Allen, a safety from Wise High School in Upper Marlboro, Md., accepted the Nittany Lions' scholarship offer, several recruiting websites reported. With Allen's commitment, the Nittany Lions are now more than halfway to their 2014 scholarship limit of 15 as mandated by last July's NCAA sanctions. The 6-foot-2, 188-pound Allen, who is ranked four stars by Scout and 247 Sports and three stars by Rivals, is the first safety to accept an offer for next year from coach Bill O'Brien.

Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment Inc., owner of Parx in Bensalem, announced Friday that it was applying for a casino license in Maryland. The company is also partnered with Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. to build Live! Hotel and Casino, one of six proposals currently competing for Philadelphia's second gaming license. Maryland Casino L.L.C. - a subsidiary of Greenwood Gaming - submitted an application with the State of Maryland Video Lottery Facility Location Commission to develop an $800 million hotel, gaming and entertainment venue in Prince George's County, Md., to be branded as Parx Casino Hotel & Spa. - Suzette Parmley

PARK RIDGE, Ill. - No more Legends . And no more Leaders . The Big Ten is giving them the boot and following a more traditional route for its division names. The conference is going with East and West instead and switching to a nine-game format for football after presidents and chancellors approved the moves on Sunday. The new division alignments will begin in 2014 when Rutgers and Maryland join the conference, meaning Legends and Leaders will be a thing of the past.

LIKE EVERY talented basketball player, Hakeem Baxter was hoping to receive numerous Division I offers. Instead . . . "I only got one," he said. At 7 o'clock Wednesday night, Baxter, an explosive, worker-bee, point-guard prospect from Philadelphia Electrical and Technology Charter, said yes to his one big suitor, Maryland-Eastern Shore, by signing scholarship papers. "I looked at things the right way," he said. "It would have been nice to get more looks, but those guys were really showing me love.

Mark Williams, a senior power forward at Montrose Christian School in Rockville, Md., has made an oral commitment to play basketball at Temple. The 6-foot-8, 238-pounder chose the Owls over scholarship offers from Vanderbilt and Kent State. He averaged 16 points and 11 rebounds while leading Montrose in three-point shooting this season. Williams becomes the third member of Temple's 2013 recruiting class, joining Josh Brown (St. Anthony of Jersey City) and Kyle Green (Camden Catholic)

HANOVER, Md. - Maryland Live, the largest and most successful of the state's three operating casinos, introduced dealer-staffed table games late last week, doubling its workforce seemingly overnight - and, some say, amping up its threat to gambling halls in Atlantic City and Delaware, plus at least one casino along I-95 in Pennsylvania. Craps player Nick Giron, 28, of Prince George County, said he'd be cutting back on his trips to Atlantic City. It's a 30-minute drive to Maryland Live vs. three hours to the Shore, where he typically plays craps at the Borgata.

Haddonfield senior Greg Halla liked a lot of things about the University of Maryland track program. Especially the Terrapins' pending move to the Big Ten Conference. "That was the big thing for me," said Halla, who has committed to attend Maryland on a partial athletic scholarship. "It's exciting to think about the opportunity to run in the Big Ten. " Maryland, a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, is scheduled to join the Big Ten in 2014. Halla is a standout distance runner at Haddonfield.