Columbia, Mo. ? The Missouri Tigers hope their five new defensive starters will produce better results than last year’s defense, which gave up 450.3 yards per game to rank below every team in the Big 12 except Kansas.

Coach Gary Pinkel will have his second look at the defense against Ball State today in Muncie, Ind. The unit gave up 411 yards in last week’s season-opening 22-15 win over Illinois.

“Obviously when we got down into red zone, our defense played exceptionally well down there, and I was very pleased with that,” Pinkel said. “We have to get better on first down and we have to get better on third down on defense.”

The defense held its ground when it had to, allowing only three field goals in the first three quarters.

The big question mark was how the secondary would hold up against Illinois’ offense, which ranked 10th in the nation last year and found a big-time quarterback in Jon Beutjer.

That put junior college transfer Nino William II, sophomore Calvin Washington and redshirt freshman Dedrick Harrington to an immediate test.

The secondary gave up 284 passing yards, but most of it came out of little dump-offs to the tight ends or running backs.