The Baylor girls’ basketball team held off every Battle Ground Academy charge Friday night in the Red Raiders’ 51-43 Division II-AA sectional win at Duke Arena.
Amber Howard hit three 3-pointers and led Baylor with 17 points. Megan Ausdran scored 15, Mary Ellen Williams 13 and Ashley Sims six. They were the only players to score for the Lady Red Raiders (15-11), the No. 3 seed from the East/Middle Region.
Baylor led 25-21 at halftime despite struggling to contain eighth-seeded BGA’s 6-foot-1 Deidre Ramer, a College of Charleston signee who was the tallest player on the floor by several inches. Ramer, who scored 19 points in a loss to Baylor on Monday, controlled the glass at both ends of the floor Friday, and her nine first-half points kept BGA (1-19) in the game.
“She killed us in the first half because she went and got (the ball),” Baylor coach John Gibson said. “They’d miss and she’d put it right back in. … We did a better job of staying home and doubling her from beneath in the second half.”
It was a much different story in the second half as Ausdran picked up her play down low. She not only helped limit Ramer to four points in the second half — Ramer didn’t score in the fourth quarter — but Ausdran also scored 11 of her 15 in the final two periods.