AUBURN | Auburn prides itself on a tough run defense. That pride was bruised and battered last Saturday.

Penn State rushed for 245 yards, the most allowed by AU’s defense since Georgia State’s 267 in a near upset a year ago.

“Yeah that surprised me,” said defensive tackle Marcus Harris. “Hats off to Penn State, but a lot of that was caused with misfitting gaps and not filling in the right gaps and not playing the right technique that our coaches taught us.

“So Penn State did a good job but I feel like if we do the little things right we'll stop that. It's just the little things that can cause a big run. I feel like we went to practice this week, looked at film Sunday and we've seen how close we were to stopping them, but I feel like we fixed those mistakes going on and we're going to be better.”

The Tigers gave up just 128 rushing yard combined in their first two games with Mercer and San Jose State averaging 2.1 yards per carry. PSU averaged 6.3 yards per carry.

In his postgame press conference, AU coach Bryan Harsin pointed to tackling issues. But according to PFF, the Tigers had just three missed tackles in the entire game.

“I don't know if there's anything schematically that they necessarily did that we hadn't seen. I think their kids just made some good plays. They broke some tackles,” said Harsin. “I think there were some opportunities for us to make those plays.

“And those guys, we knew. We knew that their running backs were good. We knew that they had a chance to — if they got in the open field, we've got to tackle. But really, it was that. They had some explosive runs. I don't know how many, but I know they had several explosive runs.”

Auburn (2-1) opens SEC play Saturday against Missouri. Kickoff at Jordan-Hare Stadium is scheduled for 11 a.m. CT on ESPN.