Anytime the Auburn women’s basketball team even thinks about looking past an opponent, coach Nell Fortner reminds them about 2004.
The Tigers finished the 2004-05 season — Fortner’s first with the program —16-13 and were left out of the mix for the NCAA Tournament. It might not have been the case, Fortner said, had the Tigers taken care of business at Jacksonville State right before conference play began.
“Ultimately, it kept us out of tournament,” Fortner said of the 71-66 loss to the Gamecocks. “We’ll never forget that. That’s a lesson for us every year.”
That lesson will be in the No. 14 Tigers’ heads as they host North Carolina A&T tonight at Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum and Sam Houston State on Friday. Tonight’s tip is set for
6 p.m.
“There’s no way this team is going to overlook anybody,” Fortner said. “We’ll make sure of that. We’ve got enough veterans on this team to understand how detrimental that can be to your team if you do that, so I really look to their leadership to help us not have that happen to us.”
Though they sit at just 3-2, the Lady Aggies of the Mid-Eastern American Conference have received at least one vote in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll every week of the season.
“They’re very fast, and they can get up and down the floor and they shoot the ball well,” Fortner said. “It’ll be an up and down game.”
The depth up and down Auburn’s bench, along with any starter’s ability to take over a game has paced the Tigers to their undefeated 7-0 start. Leading scorer DeWanna Bonner had just nine points in Auburn’s 63-52 over Florida International in Saturday’s conclusion to the Thanksgiving Classic in Miami, Fla, but Auburn controlled the entire game.
“It was a good weekend,” Fortner said, “in terms of being able to compete for a championship and getting that experience.”