AUBURN | Jarquez Hunter broke through the left side for a 15-yard gain on Auburn’s opening offensive play, and the senior was off to the races.

Except he wasn’t. In fact, it turned out quite the opposite.

Hunter, the SEC’s leading rusher, had just 11 more carries in the game for 35 yards as the Tigers suffered a humiliating 17-7 defeat to Vanderbilt Saturday afternoon.

“Well, I thought Vandy did a good job, you know, played a lot of bear front and did a lot of different things that were going to take away some of the run game from us and thought they tackled extremely well and we, I'd have to watch the film to see, you know, how well we strained at the point of attack,” said AU coach Hugh Freeze.

“They’ve been very good against the run all year and were today for sure. Whether or not that was a combination of us poorly executing or whether that was them, I have to watch the film and see.”

After rushing for 278 yards on 23 carries in a 24-10 win at Kentucky last week, Hunter was held to 50 yards on 12 carries. Auburn totaled 88 rushing yards against a Commodore defense that came into the game ranked ninth in the SEC allowing 114.8 rushing yards per game.

Hunter had just two carries in the second half, both early in the third quarter, but Freeze said he wasn’t injured.

“He did look gassed to me,” said Freeze. “But the second half was just kind of, I mean I can't remember how many possessions we had, but we didn't have many and when we did, the last two for sure were we gotta go. And so you're not handing them the ball in those circumstances, but other than that I don't know that we have but two other possessions.”

Auburn had five possessions in the second half three of which came with the game tied or AU trailing by a field goal.

AU finished with 12 yards rushing on 10 carries in the second half.

Auburn will take a week off before hosting ULM Nov. 16 at 11:45 a.m. CT on SECN+/ESPN+.