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Sports

Laurel Players Ready To Dance in March Madness

Hampton, with three local players, wins MEAC and will play Duke in the NCAA tournament while Arledge and George Mason will meet Villanova.

The game was held in North Carolina—Winston-Salem to be exact—but there were certainly a lot of ties to Laurel on Saturday when Hampton faced Morgan State of Baltimore in the MEAC men's basketball title game.

The Hampton roster includes junior Chris Tolson and Milade Lola-Charles, a pair of Laurel High graduates. And for good measure, Wesley Dunning, who also plays for the Pirates, grew up in Laurel and graduated from Gonzaga High in Washington, D.C.

The Morgan State team includes Larry Bastfield, whose high school coach at Towson Catholic was Josh Pratt, now the girls basketball coach at St. Vincent Pallotti High in downtown Laurel.

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Another player for Morgan State is Aric Brooks, a former teammate of Laurel High graduate Will Alston at Division I Jacksonville in Florida. Alston transferred this season to Division II Valdosta State in Georgia, while Brooks hoped to help Morgan State to its third straight MEAC title.

But Hampton won, 60-55, to win the MEAC title and gain an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The No. 16 seed Pirates (24-8) will face No. 1 seed Duke (30-4) on Friday at around 3:10 p.m. in Charlotte. The Blue Devils are led by senior guard Nolan Smith, ACC player of the year from Upper Marlboro. It has been five years since Hampton made the NCAA field.

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Tolson had three points and one steal in 17 minutes off the bench in the win over Morgan State. Lola-Charles did not score in four minutes and Dunning had one block in 19 minutes. Tolson has come off the bench in 25 games and is averaging 14.4 minutes per contest.

"I give a lot of credit to these kids. A lot of people have been talking to me out there (saying), 'You did a great job.' Naw, I didn't; they did a great job. They took me on this ride, and I appreciate them for that," Hampton coach Ed Joyner told the Daily Press of Virginia after the win on Saturday.

Bastfield, a transfer from Toledo, had six points for Morgan State. Brooks also had six points, though he missed all eight shots from the field. Keith Coutreyer, former head coach at Laurel High, was an assistant under Joyner last season at Hampton before he took a position at Howard prior to this season.

Meanwhile, George Mason will play Villanova on Friday at around 2:10 p.m. in the first round of the NCAA field. The Patriots gained an at-large bid to the Big Dance and are one of three teams from the CAA to make the field. The others are league champ ODU, and VCU.

Jonathan Arledge, who attended Meade High as a freshman, is now a freshman forward for Mason. He is a product of the Laurel Boys and Girls Club and also played high school ball for KIMA, a charter school in Washington, D.C. that played its home games at the Laurel Boys and Girls Club.

"It is exciting. It should be a great college basketball game," Mason head coach Jim Larranaga told WTOP radio on Monday morning of facing Villanova. Maurice Sutton, a key sub for the Wildcats, is a graduate of Largo High. Carlos Horne, a top player for Laurel High this past season, transferred from Largo High.

Mason and Villanova met early last season in a tournament in Puerto Rico, and the Wildcats won. "It was an interesting game in Puerto Rico. We played them tough," Larranaga said. His team played much of that game without guard Cam Long, now the team's best player as a senior. The Wildcats have lost five games in a row going into the NCAA field.

Other Prince George's products for Mason are sixth man Isaiah Tate of Largo and Bryon Allen of Upper Marlboro. The CAA women's tournament ended Sunday at The Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro as JMU beat Delaware to earn a bid to the national tourney.

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