With less than a week to go before his team's opening game, University of Massachusetts men's basketball coach Derek Kellogg wasn't pleased with his squad's showing in Saturday's closed scrimmage against Seton Hall.

"We didn't play as well I wanted or anticipated. We didn't take care of the ball the way we had been in practice. Our transition defense was porous from my perspective. I was glad it was a scrimmage game that doesn't count on our record," Kellogg said before Monday's practice. "It'll be good to see how we respond to it. I think that will show a little bit about my team. Can we take how we played on Saturday, build on it and get better, rectify a few situations that can't be simulated in practice and go from that? I'm pretty confident our guys are going to come back ready to get better and push forward."

NCAA rules prevent schools from releasing statistics or results from closed scrimmages.

The Minutemen, who open their season Friday at 9 p.m. against Elon at Curry Hicks Cage, were without Sean Carter, who hurt his hamstring in practice last week. Sophomore Raphiael Putney played but was limited with an ankle injury.

Carter will likely miss practice early this week.

"I'd rather hold him out now and have him ready for the game," Kellogg said.

Kellogg thought Carter's absence allowed freshman big man Cady Lalanne to better test himself.

"Cady has settled into a certain level of play that needs to be taken to the next level. Now he's in better shape he needs to get used to that college speed," Kellogg said. "Playing against a Big East team was good for him because he couldn't just overpower guys and knock them out of the way. Those guys are a little bigger heightwise and a little more mature. It was a good test for him as a freshman."

Kellogg said he used some lineup combinations against Seton Hall that he wouldn't likely use in games.

"At times we had some youth on the floor, four guys that hadn't played or hadn't played much college basketball before," he said. "I have to be careful what lineups we put out there."

After giving his team Sunday off, Kellogg planned to spend most of Monday's practice working on mistakes from Saturday's scrimmage before switching out of preseason mode into preparing for Elon.

"We're doing things to fix our mistakes from Saturday, but at the same time trying to execute things defensively and offensively to get ready for Elon," he said.

The Phoenix were 14-17 last year and 7-11 in the Southern Conference.

Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Follow UMass coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/GazetteUMass. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at http://www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.