Coach Robin Pingeton rested her head on her hand and squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to forget a bad memory.

“Tonight’s a tough night,” Pingeton said. “I felt like we let one get away.”

Missouri women’s basketball made only one of its first 15 shots, digging itself in a double-digit hole in the opening 10 minutes against Arkansas on Thursday night. The Tigers rallied to get back in the game, but turnovers derailed the effort, leading to a 58-50 loss.

“Tough night, obviously,” Pingeton said. “I’m really disappointed with our execution, offensively. Obviously we had too many turnovers. Twenty-five of their 58 points came off our turnovers. You’re not going to play the game flawlessly, but we had way too many empty possessions.”

Freshmen Lianna Doty leads the team in assists for the season, but also has twice as many turnovers as the next two players combined. Doty tied a season-high with seven giveaways Thursday.

“Sometimes I just feel like she plays with such reckless abandon, which can be a really good thing, but it can be detrimental at times, too,” Pingeton said. “You expect that a little bit out of a young point guard, but again, we just cannot afford to continue to give up so many points off our turnovers.”

Some of those turnovers stemmed from Missouri’s desperation to find an open look. Sometimes, that look never came — the Tigers had three shot clock violations in the first half.

“When we got them so late in the shot clock, and we got so many shot clock violations on them, I knew we had done really a pretty good job with it,” Arkansas coach Tom Collen said.

With nothing working outside, logic would lead one to believe that Missouri (13-7, 2-4 Southeastern Conference) would go inside. But senior center Liz Smith was held off the score sheet in the first half, something Smith takes the blame for.

“Part of that is on me, I have to be able to go in there and demand the ball so we can get it inside out,” Smith said.

The Tigers and Razorbacks experienced somewhat of a role reversal behind the arc.

“Philosophically, there is no doubt, they feel they can beat people from the three-point line, and they feel like people can’t beat them from the three-point line,” Collen said.

The Tigers, who lead the nation in three-pointers with 9.4 per game, made just six on the night. Arkansas (14-5, 2-4) made eight, almost doubling its season average.

“We got a few of them to fall early and that kind of sparked us for the rest of the game,” Arkansas senior guard Erin Gatling said.

Missouri will go on the road Sunday to try and pull itself within one game of a .500 conference record. The Tigers play Texas A&M at 7 p.m. on ESPNU.