Not much has gone well for the SIU women’s basketball team since it began Missouri Valley Conference play, and that trend continued against Indiana State.

The Salukis lost 63-37 Thursday at Indiana State, shooting 25.3 percent from the field and committing 18 turnovers in the game. As a result, SIU is still without a win against a conference opponent through six games.

‘To me this is an embarrassing loss,’ coach Dana Eikenberg said in a postgame radio interview on 810AM. ‘I’m embarrassed, and as coaches we’ll make sure we dig down and do what we need to do.’

SIU (4-11, 0-6 MVC) began the second half trailing the Sycamores by nine points and spent all of the half facing a deficit somewhere between six and 26 points. Freshman guard Olivia Lett’s 3-pointer 52 seconds into the second half cut the deficit to six, the closest SIU came to Indiana State for the rest of the game.

An 8-1 run a few minutes later in the second half helped Indiana State (9-8, 5-1) pull away and hand SIU its seventh loss in a row.

In the first half, the Salukis held the lead three different times, but lost it for good with 10 minutes, 28 seconds to play. The Sycamores took the lead with a 6-0 run, and after a 3-pointer by senior Erica Smith closed the gap to 20-18, the Sycamores answered with a 7-0 run to end the half.

SIU went into halftime trailing 27-18 after committing 14 turnovers in the first half.

‘ Eikenberg said missing layups and free throws has hurt the Salukis, who shot 4-of-7 from the free-throw line against the Sycamores but missed too many layups for Eikenberg’s liking.

‘Layups make your defense great,’ Eikenberg said in the radio interview. ‘You get a layup and suddenly your defense is juiced.’

In the Salukis’ previous game, senior guard Erica Smith scored 22 points, her second-best single-game total of the season, on 8-of-14 shooting from the field.

Smith followed up that performance with a team-high eight points and eight rebounds Thursday. She also committed her fourth foul of the game with 10:27 to go in the second half, but did not foul out.

Despite being SIU’s leading scorer this season, senior forward Jasmine Gibson has scored 13 total points in the last two games. Against the Sycamores, Gibson scored two points, her lowest single-game total since last season when she scored two points at Indiana State.

‘So many people ask me, ‘Where’s Jasmine?” Eikenberg said in the radio interview. ‘I don’t know. I hope somebody locates her and she comes back.’

The Salukis will stay on the road for their next game, which is 7:05 p.m. Saturday at Illinois State (13-4, 4-1). SIU has won its last three games at Illinois State.

Before the Redbirds’ game against Evansville Thursday, they had won 11 of their last 12 games. They also boast the Valley’s top scoring offense, at 74.9 points per game, and the top individual scorer,’ senior guard Kristi Cirone, at 18.8 points per game.

Eikenberg said in the radio interview that Cirone’s best quality is her ability to make the players around her better.

‘We’ve got to find a way to contain her,’ Eikenberg said.