Leicester Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill blamed ill-discipline for his side's 40-19 LV= Cup defeat by the Scarlets yesterday.
Tigers were handed two yellow cards and gave away countless penalties as Llanelli fly-half Owen Williams landed six kicks in the opening 43 minutes.
Three late tries for the home side made it a convincing scoreline in a game which had nothing riding on it. Sale booked the semi-final berth following Saturday's win over Wasps.
"It was disappointing that the result looked a little bit one-sided," said Cockerill.
"We had such little territory and we gave away so many penalties that we got punished for it. They scored 21 points from the boot.
"We scored three tries to nil in the first half but they were still in it at the break because, every time they got into our half, we infringed and they punished us.
"The sin-bins hurt us in the second half and we took some senior guys off later on to protect them for next week's game against London Welsh.
"The Scarlets played really well and fair play to them. But I was disappointed with our discipline and there were one or two guys that kept giving penalties away. That really cost us.
"That is a lesson learned for us and that will dictate what happens going forward."
Tigers went into the game with nothing riding on it and that put Cockerill and his players in a strange position.
Tigers started well though with an early Thomas Waldrom try putting them into a 12th-minute lead.
A penalty try on the half-hour mark and a third score on the half-time whistle from Andy Forsyth sent Tigers in at the break in good spirits after the Scarlets had suffered two yellow cards.
But Rob Andrew and Fraser Balmain saw the third and fourth yellow cards of the game just after the hour-mark and that saw momentum swing the Scarlets way as they ran in three tries in the last 10 minutes.
"There's not many times that we play a game with nothing on it but that didn't affect our mentality and some of the commitment from both sides was good," added Cockerill.
"Some of those young lads have learned what life is like and some of those senior boys have had a run out.
"One or two lads did really well and applied themselves and I thought Brett Deacon was outstanding leading the side.
"Harry Wells is a young man and he battled through well in the second-row. While Fraser Balmain came on and learned a lesson. Some games have gone well for him at tight-head, but today he struggled."
Tigers suffered a number of injuries with young flanker George Oliver's knee looking the worst of the lot. Boris Stankovich and Logovi'i Mulipola had ankle knocks and Richard Thorpe got a stinger.
