The University of Louisville men's basketball team opens play in the Big East Conference Tournament Thursday in New York City. The top-seeded Cardinals will take on Providence at noon. U of L coach Rick Pitino says his players enter the tournament knowing they've already met the more difficult challenge of capturing the regular season conference title."We just spent three months to win a championship. we're not going to beat ourselves up over three days. We're going in there, you'll see how hard we're playing, and we want to win badly. We know we're not going to have crowds....it's not going to be any worse than West Virginia, it's not going to be any worse than at Kentucky, at Syracuse, so we've been through the gamut here," PItino said.Meanwhile, the Kentucky Wildcats open play in the Southeastern Conference Tournament Thursday against Mississippi. Indiana takes on Penn State Thursday in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament.(Logo from www.bigeast.org) ¼/p>
Rick Howlett was midday host and the host of LPM's weekly talk show, "In Conversation." He was with LPM from 2001-2023 and held many different titles, including Morning Edition host, Assignment Editor and Interim News Director. He died in August 2023. Read a remembrance of Rick here.