The LSU men’s basketball team came face-to-face with its long-suspected depth problems during the Thanksgiving holidays, as a makeshift lineup could not spark the Tigers (3-2) in a pair of NIT Season Tip-off losses.”Like most good kids, most teams that are young, the next time out there is going to be better,” LSU coach Trent Johnson said in a news release. “I thought for the most part we were better.”Junior point guard Bo Spencer suffered a sprained ankle Wednesday night in the team’s 81-55 semifinal loss to No. 13 Connecticut (4-1) and was unable to play in Friday’s third-place game, a 71-52 loss to Arizona State (5-1).”First of all, I mean, we’re not going to make excuses for injuries or lack of experience from the point of basketball. Let’s get that clear right now. There’s no sympathy for us in this situation,” Johnson said. “Obviously against a team like this, if you don’t have Bo Spencer, who is our leading scorer coming into the game who runs our team, not to mention Alex Farrer, who is a guy who can shoot the ball, that’s a big loss.”Johnson received key contributions from several members of the bench in Spencer’s absence. Sophomore point guard Chris Bass played a combined 69 of a possible 80 minutes in the two games. He notched seven points and three assists against the Huskies and added six assists against Arizona State, although he failed to score against the Sun Devils.”You know, I think it took a little scoring drought from the point guard perspective,” senior forward Tasmin Mitchell said in a news release. “But I’m not going to say Chris Bass didn’t do a bad job either, you know, but Bo Spencer, you can’t replace him.”Walk-on sophomore guard Zach Kinsley provided a surprise spark against Arizona State as he notched 12 first-half points before cooling off after halftime.Kinsley had 14 points for the game — a career-high for LSU’s second-year guard. LSU only managed 18 points in the second half against Arizona State as the Tigers went 10 minutes without a field goal.”You know, we stayed within our offense,” Mitchell said. “I felt like we got good shots towards the goal. They just didn’t fall. It happens to the best of us. But you know we have to convert baskets during that particular time. And we didn’t.”Another big reason for LSU’s shortcomings was the disappearance of the Tigers’ productive post positions. Sophomore forwards Storm Warren and Garrett Green, along with freshman forward Dennis Harris, all found themselves in foul trouble early against UConn. Harris and Green combined for just 13 minutes and no points against Arizona State.”We’ve been waiting since the exhibition season for us to have a breakout a little bit,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said in a news release. “Quite frankly it was a different kind of breakout. The breakout for us was playing with energy, going back to rebounding, which is something we really did well.”Warren, who entered the week with three-straight double-doubles, managed 15 and 13 points, respectively, against the Huskies and Sun Devils, but he could not manage to stay out of foul trouble against two physical frontcourts.”I started off kind of anxious, just coming up and playing. But I had to calm myself down and just slow down and just play my game,” Warren said in a news release.Each opponent exposed different weaknesses in the Tigers’ lineup. Arizona State senior center Eric Boateng dominated the paint for 17 points and eight boards, while UConn’s nationally renowned guard duo of senior Jerome Dyson and sophomore Kemba Walker gashed LSU for 20 points each.”I just thought the kids were embarrassed in terms of the way they competed versus a very, very good UConn team,” Johnson said. “We didn’t do a very good job in transition D.  We didn’t do a very good job of rebounding the ball.”—-Contact David Helman at [email protected]