BATON ROUGE -- LSU will look to improve on the things that were exposed by a nationally-ranked Connecticut team Friday afternoon when the Tigers face Arizona State in the third place game of the Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off at Madison Square Garden.

The matinee game gets under way at 1:30 p.m. CST with the game televised on ESPN2 and broadcast on the affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network (New Country 100.7 FM The Tiger in Baton Rouge). Duke and UConn meet at 4 p.m. for the championship of the 25th preseason NIT event.

Arizona State was a 64-53 loser to No. 7 Duke in the second semifinal late on Wednesday. Forward Trent Lockett and guard Derek Glasser each had 13 points for the 4-1 Sun Devils, while Rihards Kuksiks added 12. The Sun Devils shot 46 percent in the first half to trail by just four at intermission but made just 6-of-21 in the second half.

LSU was an 81-55 loser to the nationally-ranked Huskies to fall to 3-1 on the year in a game in which Bo Spencer sprained his right ankle with about 14 minutes to play. He did not practice on Thursday and is listed as day-to-day for the contest.

Storm Warren had the best game for the Tigers with 15 points and six rebounds, making 6-of-8 field goal attempts. LSU hit just 37.1 percent, 23-of-62, while UConn was 30-of-62. LSU made just 2-of-10 three pointers and 7-of-13 at the free throw line, while UConn was 16-of-23 at the stripe, out rebounding LSU, 47-34.

But it was the transition baskets that went with the rebounding that had Coach Trent Johnson concerned going into Friday’s game.

“For me personally I was very disturbed by the transition baskets that we gave up early,” said LSU’s second year head coach.  “It has nothing to do with speed on the court; mental and physical toughness and their effort.  Going into this year, we knew that there were some concerns in that regard.  And it's good it got exposed early on in the year.  So we can move forward from there.”

The Tigers were trying to hang tight with Connecticut in the early going, trailing just 8-7, but five missed shots sandwiched around three consecutive turnovers put LSU in an early 21-10 hole they couldn’t overcome.

“The key to the game was transition made us miss and our inability to put a body on them and be physical and respond and step up to their physicality,” Johnson said.

In his post-game comments on Wednesday, Johnson made mention of freshman Eddie Ludwig who had six points and six rebounds in 21 minutes who got more aggressive and confident as the night went on.

“I look at Eddie Ludwig, the redhead kid freshman from Country Day, he takes two charges.  He just got here and he got in the post and they have two good situations where the guy had an angle to the basket and he did a good job,” the coach said.

If Spencer can’t go, sophomore Chris Bass will probably move to the point guard position. So far in 100 minutes, Bass has turned the ball over just twice with 11 assists and four steals. Bass had seven points with three assists in 30 minutes in the Connecticut game.

Arizona State before its loss to Duke has wins in the NIT over Texas State (84-62) and TCU (52-49) as the host of the West region. Its other wins came over Western Illinois (87-35) and San Francisco (104-65). The last time the two teams made was in a final-day consolation game in the Maui Invitational in 1987. Junior Marcus Thornton, playing in his first month with the Tigers, hit a long three near the buzzer to force the game into overtime before Arizona State downed the Tigers, 87-84.

Herb Sendek is the head coach of the Sun Devils, in his fourth season. Four Sun Devils are averaging in double figures with Kuksiks averaging 13.4 points a game with Lockett averaging 11.6 points and Glasser 11.0 a contest.

Johnson is 5-4 all-time against Arizona State having gone 0-1 while at Nevada and 5-3 in his four years as head coach at Stanford.

Johnson realizes that it is time to move on and see where how the Tigers rebound.

“Getting beat like this against a team like (UConn) really, really exposes you and some of the things that I talked to this group about, our group, they were exposed,” Johnson said.  “So now we move forward and see how good a team we're going to be.  That's a good thing about being in New York.  You get exposed and everybody is watching.”