The Western Kentucky women’s basketball team saw its slim hopes to make next week’s Conference USA Tournament come to an end with a 65-38 loss to Missouri State on Thursday at E.A. Diddle Arena.

Needing to win the final two games of the regular season and get some help, WKU (8-20 overall, 4-13 Conference USA) never could get firing offensively — allowing the Lady Bears to slowly pull away and officially eliminate WKU from qualifying for the conference tournament.

“I’ve never been through anything like this in my entire life,” WKU coach Greg Collins said. “I was proud of the girls’ fight. The two things I am continually proud of — one, they never stopped fighting. They never stopped working hard. They never stopped coming to practice with good effort and good energy. And No. 2, we kept getting better. Now tonight it didn’t look like we did any better, but we continued to improve throughout the season. So I am proud of those two things.

“ … I’m not proud of our record, where we stand or our execution but those are things we have to work on.”

WKU struggled from the start and continued to struggle throughout, shooting 27% for the game. Missouri State (19-11, 11-6) also struggled early, but never trailed — leading for almost 39 out of 40 minutes.

The Lady Bears led 14-9 after one quarter, with a 3-pointer from Zsofia Telegdy getting WKU within 18-16 midway through the second. Missouri State closed the half with a 9-2 spurt to make the score 27-18 and opened the second half with six straight to extend the margin to 15 points.

WKU got as close as 11 in the third, but an 8-3 surge allowed Missouri State to open up a 46-39 advantage. The lead continued to expand with Missouri State outscoring the Lady Tops 19-6 in the fourth quarter.

“Even in the third quarter I would say in the huddle, ‘We are down 14. We are down 13,’ ” Collins said. “We weren’t completely out of it, but we couldn’t make a shot if we were in the gym by ourselves. Some of it was our fault for bad drives, off balance. Against physical play you’ve got to be steady and under control. We took some highly contested shots there and didn’t finish the ones we needed.”

Torri James led WKU with 13 points and six rebounds, while Trinity Rowe added 11 points.

“We struggled to get consecutive stops in a row, so that kind of deflates you on offense,” Rowe said. “We really needed to work on our ball movement, our player movement. The past few games we’ve done really well with that and this game we just really struggled to find a flow offensively.”

After shooting 25% in the first half, Missouri State shot 52% in the second half to steadily pull away. Laine Douglas led Missouri State with 22 points, while Kaemyn Bekemeier added 20 points.

The Lady Bears outrebounded WKU 54-34.

WKU will now wrap up the season hosting FIU at 1 p.m. on Saturday. It will be Senior Day with Lady Toppers honoring six seniors. Collins said he expects his team will be ready to try and finish a disappointing season on a high note.

“I don’t have any doubt now while they are down, they are disappointed,” Collins said. “I am actually glad that they expected to be one of the best teams in our conference and they are disappointed we didn’t play well and we didn’t get that done. We will come back tomorrow with a different attitude and get ready for FIU and we will give FIU our very best on Saturday.”

James agreed that the Lady Toppers will look to put the loss behind them and play like the team that won three of four heading into Thursday.

“We are going to try to take that momentum from the other games and bring it into the game against FIU,” James said. “We want to end it with a win. Give our (seniors) a good game, because we have so many of them. We want to make sure all of them have a great game and we are able to win.”