Auburn takes on Purdue this afternoon at 12:30 at Conseco Fieldhouse as part of the Boilermaker Blockbuster.

Getting there was a battle unto itself.

The Tigers arrived at the airport in Washington, D.C. for their flight to Indianapolis around lunch time on Thursday, a day after beating George Washington.

Only to find out that their flight had been canceled due to heavy snow.

So the Tigers found another flight, one that was pushed back until about 5:30 or 6 p.m., before they were able to board the flight.

They sat on the tarmac for a while before being notified that flight was also canceled.

So the Tigers and their entourage, all 30 of them, reclaimed their luggage at baggage claim, piled back into a bunch of cabs and returned to the hotel they’d stayed at the night before, setting up for another try Friday.

“They warned us it might be a long travel day,” guard Alli Smalley said. “We just had to be patient and stay positive with it.”

The wake-up call came at 4 a.m. Friday. Then it was just a drive to Baltimore, a flight to Indianapolis and another short trip to the Conseco Fieldhouse before Auburn finally arrived for its practice.

“Everybody was so tired of sitting around in an airport all day, we were ready to get out there,” Smalley said. “It was a pretty good practice.”

Now that Auburn’s travel has ceased for a moment, it can focus on the middle part of its three-game, eight-day Midwestern swing against the Boilermakers (5-3).

Tigers coach Nell Fortner was Purdue’s head coach during the 1996-97 season and was also coach of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever from 2001-03.

“It has been a long time since I was there,” Fortner said. “There will be some familiar faces in the stands. I have some great memories from Purdue and I am looking forward to going back to Indianapolis and competing against them in an arena I coached in in the WNBA.”

Auburn’s coming off a 52-45 win over George Washington on Wednesday, its third win in the past four games.

Blanche Alverson scored 16 and Smalley added 14 as the Tigers held off a late run for the win.

“I thought we showed some real grit, some real fight in how we attacked the offensive glass. Just our will to win was outstanding,” Fortner said. “It was not always pretty offensively, but we defended hard and got on the offensive boards to give us opportunities to score and it paid off for us.”

The Tigers plan on traveling to Chicago after the Purdue game in advance of their Monday tilt with Chicago State.

But they’ve seen what the weather can make out of best-laid plans.

“You could either sleep, read, sing, play different games. It gets so long that a lot of people were doing a lot of different things,” Smalley said of the delays. “We were all stranded there together. We got to spend a lot of time with each other, and that’s a good thing.”

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Auburn (4-5) vs. Purdue (5-3)
Where: Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Ind.

When: 12:30 p.m.

Radio/TV: WMXA (96.7 FM)/No TV

Projected starters, Auburn: G Morgan Toles, 5-9, So. (7.2 ppg, 4.6 apg); G Parrisha Simmons, 6-0, Jr. (2.8 ppg, 3.3 rpg); G Alli Smalley, 5-8, Sr. (12.9 rpg, 2.3 rpg); G/F Blanche Alverson, 6-3, So. (10.1 ppg, 3.2 rpg); F Jordan Greenleaf, 6-1, Sr. (9.0 ppg, 8.7 rpg)

Projected Starters, Purdue: G Brittany Rayburn, 6-0, Jr. (14.3 ppg, 3.0 rpg); G Courtney Moses, 5-7, Fr. (12.6 ppg, 2.3 rpg); F Alex Guyton, 6-3, Jr. (6.1 ppg, 3.5 rpg); G Chantel Poston, 5-10, So. (2.6 ppg, 3.3 rpg); F Ashley Wilson, 6-0, So. (4.5 ppg, 2.5 rpg)