Maybe it was because Marquette looked on pace to finish the game with triple digits on the scoreboard. Maybe it was the flurry of transition baskets at both end of the floor. Maybe it was the sight of junior Svetlana Kovalenko, who had yet to hit from downtown this season, squaring up to fire from beyond the arc.

Take your pick; in any case, Saturday's game against Louisville looked like a track meet early on.

When the going got gritty, however, the Golden Eagles buckled down, and the Cardinals began tripping over themselves.

On the offensive end of the floor, Louisville's up-tempo attack translated into 26 turnovers. On defense, the Cardinals paid for their aggressiveness with 19 fouls.

Louisville head coach Tom Collen said his team was simply trying to stay competitive in a tough road matchup.

"When you get on the road in the Big East, if you don't bring that kind of intensity, especially against the good teams, you're just not going to stay in the game," he said.

He also said the Cardinals need to find a balance that allows them to stay in control.

"We've got to learn to play with more composure," Collen said. "We would just constantly come up with steals and throw it ahead, take one dribble and travel.

"Turning the ball over 26 times, you're just not going to be able to beat a team like Marquette."

The Golden Eagles turned those miscues into 23 points. Marquette also made the Cardinals pay for their overly physical play, going 19-for-23 from the foul line. Nineteen of those attempts came in the second half, when a series of quick Louisville team fouls put the Golden Eagles in double-bonus territory with nearly 11 minutes left to play.

Sophomore Krystal Ellis and senior Christina Quaye led the way from the charity stripe, combining to go 9-for-10 after the break. Free throws accounted for 16 of Marquette's 31 second-half points.

Louisville's Angel McCoughtry, the Big East's leading scorer, shot a blistering 8-for-11 from the field in the first half to account for 19 of the Cardinals' 30 points at the intermission, converting four offensive rebounds into three put-backs and drilling a pair of high-arcing, contested threes.

"Angel is an incredible player," said head coach Terri Mitchell. "She just put some shots right in our face."

But McCoughtry did not score again until more than eight minutes had gone by in the second half.

"Part of that was just that we'd turn the ball over before we'd ever get to a point in the offense where she was going to get a look," Collen said.

McCoughtry finished with a game-high 29 points, but no other Cardinal scored more than seven, marking the third time this season Louisville has lost a game in which McCoughtry scored at least half of the team's total points.

Mitchell said her team focused on playing at a more deliberate tempo in the second half.

"We were taking quicker shots in the first half, and some of them were going in and some of them weren't, but we need to make the defense work," she said.

Louisville did not respond well to the adjustment in pace, committing six fouls and four turnovers in the opening seven minutes of the second half. By the time Marquette completed a 14-0 run to put the game away, the Cardinals had run themselves into the ground.