{"id":673346,"date":"2026-05-16T11:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673346\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T11:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:47:13","slug":"nalyssa-smith-graduates-from-baylor-4-years-after-leaving-for-the-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673346\/","title":{"rendered":"NaLyssa Smith graduates from Baylor 4 years after leaving for the WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UNCASVILLE, Conn. (AP) \u2014 NaLyssa Smith can now say she&#8217;s a college graduate.<\/p>\n<p>Smith, who plays for the Las Vegas Aces, graduated from Baylor on Friday, four years after leaving the school for the WNBA. It\u2019s not uncommon for rookies in the WNBA to potentially miss their graduations as they leave school early to play in the league. It&#8217;s rare when one goes back and gets her degree so many years later.<\/p>\n<p>She played at Baylor from 2018-22, winning a national championship in 2019 and earning AP first-team All-America honors in 2021 and 2022. Smith left the school a few classes short from earning her degree in health and kinesiology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt means everything to me,\u201d Smith told the AP after Las Vegas beat Connecticut 101-94 on Friday night. \u201cIt was something my parents were really big on and my grandma before she passed away, she really want me to graduate, so it was something I knew I had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith said that she had mentioned to Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon the possibility of walking at graduation, but the coach said that basketball was the priority right now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou got to respect it,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n<p>Hammon said that she wished the ceremony had been earlier in the day and that they didn&#8217;t have a game that night so Smith could have been able to be in Texas for the ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think you have to celebrate people\u2019s wins, even the ones that they did off the court,\u201d the coach said before the game. \u201c And that\u2019s a huge accomplishment. I mean, the fact that it was important enough for her to finish that job. A lot of people just go to school and they never get into they even they never go back. And she\u2019s somebody who just continued to work towards that. There\u2019s that resiliency and stick to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith, who had four points in Friday&#8217;s win, said that she would be able to go to Baylor in December and walk then. It\u2019s not uncommon for rookies in the WNBA to potentially miss their graduations as they leave school early to play in the league.<\/p>\n<p>Her teammates <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DYXw_O2Kbx2\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">gave her flowers<\/a> to help her celebrate the achievement since she couldn\u2019t be in Waco, Texas with the game Friday night in Connecticut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody has to do that. So it just shows their selflessness and just shows that they really care about me,\u201d Smith said of her teammates. \u201cI think it was big, I liked it, I appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNCASVILLE, Conn. (AP) \u2014 NaLyssa Smith can now say she&#8217;s a college graduate. Smith, who plays for the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[8133,49,48,4785,35697,200422,200416,247566,233381,247717,82,630],"class_list":["post-673346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-becky-hammon","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-connecticut","tag-nalyssa-smith","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40798-ap-nevada-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-smith-aces-graduates","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}