Junior Tyrese Tanner scored a career-high 29 points and led a dominant second-half performance by Auburn to pull away from UAB 80-57 and advance to the second round of the WNIT.
Auburn (18-13) will play the winner of Western Kentucky vs. East Carolina, which takes place Thursday.
"Tyrese was awesome, wasn't she?" head coach Terri Williams-Flournoy said. "She was just all over the floor. She led us in our press. When Ty is so active at the top of the press, it's hard to pass over the top of it. She causes a lot of havoc up there. And then offensively, in the halfcourt, I thought she did a really good job of attacking the basket and using her height to shoot over the top of the smaller guards."
Auburn was slow out of the gates and led 27-22 at halftime. The second half was a different story, as the Tigers stormed out of the gates and outscored UAB 53-35 in the final 20 minutes.
"Definitely a better second half than the first half," Williams-Flournoy said. "But that's really to be expected, having had a week off from Spring Break. They still had a little sand between their toes and between their ears. But I thought they really came back in the second half and played with a lot of intensity and great effort, especially in our press."
The Tigers' Blanche Alverson struggled early, starting the game going 0-for-7 from the floor. The senior scored her first points of the game on a layup at 16:40 of the second half. She was fouled on the play and made the free throw.
"I was getting frustrated," Alverson said. "I let it kind of get to me in the first half, but I tried to just push it out of my head for the second half. And once I hit the first one, I was way more relaxed going into it."
Alverson's three-point play ignited a 12-0 Auburn run that spanned 3:10 and pushed the Tigers' lead to 44-26. She finished 4-of-12 (2-of-6 from three) for 11 points and pulled down six rebounds.
UAB jumped out to an early 3-2 lead, but Auburn went on an 8-0 run to give it an 11-3 lead early in the first half. The Blazers rallied to cut the Tigers' lead to 27-22 at halftime.
"I think that was kind of a wake-up call," Williams-Flournoy said. "I told them in halftime, when they had cut it to five going into halftime, that this was a team that had played well throughout their conference and was a very good time.
"And at this stage right now in the game, it's one and done."
UAB's Karisma Chapman made a layup in the first minute of the second half to get cut the deficit to three, but that was the closest it would get.
Auburn held UAB to 10 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Meanwhile, Alverson and Tanner were coming to life on offense. Alverson scored all of her 11 points in the second half, and Tanner scored 19 of her 29 in the second half.
"From the second half, having a talk during halftime, I think we executed well and we just got open shots," Tanner said.
Auburn continued to stretch it's lead in the second half, getting out to a game-high 28-point advantage with 2:29 left in the game.
The Tigers' 53-point second half was their highest point total for a half all season, and the team says it thinks it can use the momentum make a run in the WNIT.
"I really think we can," junior Peyton Davis said. "I really do think we can make a run. I think this team is hungry, I think we want it. And I think we recognize that we can go far."
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