Schimmel crosses 2,000 as Cards top Houston, 81-62

On a night when senior guard Shoni Schimmel crossed into the 2,000 point club, the Louisville women's basketball team kept its record perfect at home this year with an 81-62 victory over Houston on Wednesday night at the KFC Yum Center. Schimmel scored 15 points and had eight rebounds while junior forward Sara Hammond led the team with 17 points.

Despite the 19-point victory, the No. 3 ranked Cardinals still have a lot of work to do.

"We're making the same mistakes and that's what is so frustrating to me right now," Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. "If you want to be great make a different mistake. We worked two solid days on transitional jump stopping and making a pass and we turned the ball over three times by not jump stopping."

Louisville jumped out to a 13-3 lead early led by Schimmel and Hammond. After some missed shots and a couple turnovers, the Cardinals found themselves up just two points, 24-22, with 7:45 left in the half.

Defensive intensity by the Cardinals helped cool off Houston's three-point shooting. UofL got some easy buckets inside to help stretch its lead to 38-27 at the half. The Cardinals would push the lead to an 18 point advantage early in the second half before leading by 26 points with just over four minutes left in the game.

Walz told his team at halfcourt after the game, "We are running out of days, and we are running out of games."

That also holds true to Cardinal fans to see Schimmel, who became only the second woman in school history to score 2,000 points, behind only WNBA star, Angel McCoughtry.

The Cardinals have three regular season games left. They start with Rutgers this Saturday at 3 p.m. before traveling to Cincinnati on March 1st and then the much anticipated finally against top-ranked Connecticut on March 3.