All it took was one key sequence for the Auburn women’s basketball team to break past Florida in its SEC home opener Thursday night.

Midway through the second half, Tigers guard Morgan Toles came up with a huge block under the basket to ignite the previously stilled crowd at Auburn Arena. With the ball back in Auburn’s hands, Alli Smalley nailed a 3-pointer, and then a free throw by Chantel Hilliard and a jumper by Jordan Greenleaf quickly increased the Tigers’ lead from 1 to 6 points.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by Smalley and Tyrese Tanner a few minutes later gave the Tigers some breathing room, allowing them to eventually cruise to a 73-56 win against the Gators and improve to 2-0 in SEC play.

“I remember the crowd really got into it,” Auburn head coach Nell Fortner said of that stretch. “All of a sudden, it just gave us a real surge of energy, and we just kind of fed off that until the end of the game.

And it certainly didn’t hurt that Hilliard, a junior forward, finished with a career-high 17 points and converted on seven of her eight free-throw attempts.

Fortner was very straight forward in her comments on Hilliard’s performance following the game.

“There is no question that this is the best game I’ve seen Chantel Hilliard play since she’s been at Auburn,” Fortner said.

Blanche Alverson finished with 15 points, Jordan Greenleaf with 11 and Smalley with 10 to hand the Gators their first conference loss of the season.

Auburn had found its beat by the end of the night, but it definitely took some time to get there.

The Tigers built a 5-point lead in the first three minutes of the game, but the Gators quickly trounced back with inside shots from their guards, Jaterra Bonds and Jordan Jones, and

Auburn couldn’t seem to forge any sort of lead in the first 20 minutes.

Fortner said her team couldn’t find its rhythm early on because the Gators’ press was so effective in slowing down her players in the opening minutes.

“The first half, we turned the ball over way too many times to get into any kind of an offensive flow,” Fortner said. “I think Florida really did a good job of mixing our defenses, and it really got us kind of out of sync.”

Alverson scored 13 points in the first 15 minutes of the contest – sinking three of four attempts from 3-point range during that time – though the steady shooting of Bonds, Jones and Madu kept Florida in the back-and-forth contest and gave the Gators a 33-28 lead at the break.

“She was the long-range bomber, that’s for sure,” Fortner said of Alverson. “She’s shooting the ball really well right now and just has a great range. It was unfortunate she got into foul trouble and I had to sit her down for a while, but she’s just a very confident shooter at this point, and hopefully she can continue to be.”

Alverson’s gameplan was simple: don’t think.

“I was shooting well in warmups, and I just wanted to come in and carry that over to the game,” Alverson said. “Sometimes, when you shoot well in warmups, you don’t shoot well in the game. I just wanted to make sure I carried that over and just shoot it and not think about it.”

Florida head coach Amanda Butler said Auburn’s post players were too much for her squad at this point in the season — especially the two she didn’t see coming.

“I thought that Chantel just gave them a tremendous spark and added to their presence in the paint, and Blanche, obviously, sustained them offensively in the first half,” Butler said.

“We did a horrible job of recognizing where she was.”

The Gators were plagued with 21 foul calls and were simply outrebounded in the paint, and Jennifer George, who put up 10 points, was their only player to finish in double figures.
Auburn proved it has what it takes to win consecutive games in the SEC, while Florida did not.

“I’m just really disappointed with our lack of toughness and leadership,” Butler said. “We just did a horrible job in the paint and this league is primarily one in the paint. Defense and rebounding. It’s a tough grind-it-out physical league, and we were out-toughed.”

| 737-2511