Having traveled nearly 3,000 miles already this season, the Baylor girls’ basketball team won’t mind going a couple hundred more. Especially since the right to play for a state championship is on the line with another road trip.
The Lady Red Raiders – who have been the away team in 20 of their 29 games and covered 2,916 miles so far this season – earned the right to travel to Nashville for a Division II-AA state semifinal with a 51-40 win over Father Ryan in the quarterfinals Friday night at Baylor.
“This is a big step for us, and we’re definitely excited, but our goal this year wasn’t to make it to the state tournament, it was to win it all,” said Baylor senior point guard Kaleigh Clemons, a Vanderbilt signee who won the state’s Miss Basketball award last year and is again a finalist.
Clemons finished with a team-high 15 points, scoring 10 of that total in the second half.
“Getting the big lead early really helped our confidence and gave us an emotional lift,” continued Clemons. “We kind of fed off that early in the second half and had to hold them off late. They’re a very physical team, but we did a good job of matching that tonight.”