Weekend in review: Best stories, multimedia, video and photo galleries

3/23/2009

Tournament basketball is about survival and the Start Spartans proved Friday night that they were indeed survivors in a Division I girls state basketball semifinal against West Chester Lakota West. The 11th-ranked, City League-champion Spartans (22-3) overcame an 11-point third-quarter deficit and the fouling out of senior leader Yolanda Richardson to take a 61-56 victory before a crowd of 4,553 at Value City Arena.

A motion was filed Friday to try as an adult a 17-year-old boy accused of shooting another teenager in the back during an altercation Sunday in North Toledo, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor said. Anthony Williams, Jr., 17, of North Toledo was charged with attempted murder, upgraded from a charge of delinquency in connection with felonious assault, said Lori Olender, an assistant county prosecutor. He is being held in the Lucas County Juvenile Justice Center.

The Little Gallery at Bowling Green State University s Firelands campus has been shuttered in a protest of censorship after one of 13 small sculptures was taken from its pedestal by a dean without the gallery director s knowledge. We removed a sculpture that graphically depicts a female middle school student, on her knees, performing oral sex on a standing male middle school science teacher, the university wrote in response to the flap.

William Erb III is unemployed. His wife and kids knows he's unemployed. His former employer knows he's unemployed. Even the scores of companies and temp agencies to which he's sent in the last 15 months know he's unemployed. In fact, everybody seems to count the 39-year-old East Toledoan as unemployed except the people who count the unemployed.

Mary Fisher, like many others, thought she had it figured out. After a life working cafeteria jobs and rearing four boys, the 73-year-old widow was making ends meet. All she needed was just a little more money to help pay bills and buy an increasing number of prescriptions. She needed a small financial boost, she said recently, and to get that she invested her savings in Westhaven Group LLC.

St. John's Jesuit used a simple recipe to win its Division I regional basketball final against Barberton. An aggressive offense helped the Titans charge to an early 20-2 lead, and the same offense led to a 24-8 finish. Those were the key runs in St. John's 64-47 victory before a pro-Barberton crowd of 2,552 at the University of Akron's Rhodes Arena Saturday night. "That [late run] replicated the beginning of the game.