Norwich City’s pre-season schedule ended in a narrow 1-0 defeat against Hibernian at Easter Road.
The match followed a fixture against Celtic, as City played back to back games in a double header weekend in Scotland.
The head coach said: "Yesterday's tempo was really good for both teams. Today, the tempo wasn’t as high. I was happy with the first 30 minutes.
"We've got three young players playing at centre back who’ve not played for our first team before. I thought they handled the occasion really well.
"For the last 15 minutes we were too slow on the ball, gave it away cheaply and ended up having to defend. We lost our way a bit on the ball."
Dean Smith opted to field an entirely different starting XI following the day's previous game against Celtic.
He added: "These pre-season games are about getting everybody experience. It was always going to be hard trying to balance two teams over two days, especially when we are light defensively.
"I thought we managed the game well, but I would have liked for today's game to be more of a spectacle. Both teams were slow on the ball today and it was a little bit ponderous, but the whole idea of playing back-to-back games was to get 90 minutes in their legs.
"Adam Idah's gone and got 80 minutes today. You can tell from his game time in Scotland that he needs that as he’s about three weeks behind where we’d like him at the moment, but he’s had a long time off with injury."
City looked at their most dangerous in the closing stages of the game, with a chance in the box in the dying seconds of the game.
"Onel's been really good – he was the one spark today," Smith concluded. "We needed to keep giving him the ball. We needed to keep feeding him in the second half. He produced a really good cross at the end there and we should have had someone on the end of it."
Watch the full post-match interview with Dean Smith on Canaries TV now.