01/22 at 11:42 PM

More than 12,000 fans packed into Beard-Eaves Coliseum hoping to see the Auburn women do something they hadn’t done in more than a decade.

They watched as DeWanna Bonner poured in 35 points, Whitney Boddie scored 17 and Alli Smalley scored 16.

The packed house that showed up on Jan. 25, 2009, watched as the No. 6 Tigers beat 10th-ranked Tennessee for the first time in 17 tries.

Smalley, now a senior, remembers that day fondly.

“That was probably one of the most memorable games I’ve played since I’ve been at Auburn,” Smalley said. “The atmosphere that day when we played, we fed off the crowd. We were playing Pat Summitt and Tennessee, and that kind of gets your blood pumping.

“It’s going to be the same way this year. Any time you play Tennessee, it’s going to be that way.”

Smalley’s the only player left on Auburn’s roster that played significant minutes in that historic win, the last time the Volunteers played in Auburn before their matchup with the Tigers at Auburn Arena today at 2 p.m.

Tigers coach Nell Fortner said No. 5 Tennessee (18-2, 6-0 SEC) is about the same as it always is: a team with no weaknesses.

“Eight national championships, and just year-in and year-out an incredibly strong team,” Fortner said. “Just the amount of respect you have for Pat Summit and just the great job she’s done for her program and women’s basketball in general. It just makes it a little different.”

Fortner’s Tigers are still finding their way back to the heights they reached in that win over Tennessee.

Auburn lost four starters off that squad and showed it last year, limping to a 5-11 finish in the SEC.

The early season looked like an extension of that this year, as the Tigers dropped four straight after a season-opening win and headed into December with a losing record.

“I thought we’d come along quicker, and that’s probably why I overscheduled,” Fortner said of the Tigers’ early season slate. “The good thing is, yes we’ve suffered some losses, but we really took a lot from the losses as far as knowing who we wanted to be. It was hard to go through, but in the long haul, it’s been good for us.”

Auburn has gone 11-3 since that point, including a 5-1 start in SEC play, matching its conference win total from last season in 10 fewer games.

Fortner said her team is determined not to revisit last year’s lows.

“It’s kind of motivating not making the tournament last year,” Smalley said. “That was the worst year we’ve had in a while, kind of a down year for us. That kind of made us more hungry. That’s in the back of all of our minds right now.”

This year’s Tigers are markedly different from the ones that knocked off the Volunteers, even though the two teams’ starts to their conference seasons are identical (both started 5-1).

The Tigers of two years ago had star power in Bonner and Boddie, with sophomore Smalley adding supplemental scoring when needed.

Offense can come from anywhere with this year’s Auburn squad, as six different Tigers have led the team in scoring this season.

Sophomore Blanche Alverson (11.8), Smalley (11.7), senior Jordan Greenleaf (9.7) and sophomore Morgan Toles (8.2) are all within a stone’s throw of each other for the team lead in points per game.

“I think it’s kind of surprising to the other team,” Toles said. “We don’t have that standout player that everyone’s looking for and can scout. We have a kid off the bench who can maybe come off and drop 15. That definitely makes us harder to scout and harder to defend.

“I like what we have.”

It’s a formula that’s worked for the better part of two months, a formula that seems to be getting the Tigers back to where they were just two years ago.

“I felt great about my team. I knew it was a special group of kids,” Fortner said of the ’08-’09 squad. “We don’t have the great player (this year) – like a DeWanna Bonner – but we have some really good players that play hard, and the chemistry has come together.

“That’s what’s been really fun about this bunch.”

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