With lessons learned, Baker is ready to attack sophomore season
WBB: Baker made 38 three-pointers as a freshman with the Racers
In the simplest terms, Braxcynn Baker is a shooter. The 5’11 guard knocked down 38 triples last season, the eighth-most by a Murray State freshman in program history. With nearly four months in the rearview mirror since the Racers’ season ended against Iowa in the NCAA Tournament, it appears Baker is trying let her coaches and teammates know there is more to her game than just outside shooting.
“I want to be more diverse,” Baker said. “Driving the ball more, getting in the paint, a little bit more off the dribble. I don't want to just be a three-point shooter.”
“What I have seen since we since we got back is growth in her game,” Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner added. “Everybody knows she's a shooter, but what I've seen is that she's using the other tools that we saw in recruiting. She's getting to her pull-up, she's getting to the basket, and doing those things. I think a lot of that is they just are more comfortable the second year. I think you could ask any of the players, once you've gone through it for a year, you're just more comfortable and confident. I think that's showing for her, for sure.”
Baker’s three-pointer shooting is what got her on the floor for 12 minutes a game as a freshman. Even in that relatively limited time, she became one of only 15 players in program history to attempt at least 99 three-pointers and make at least 38.4% of those shots.
The Lowell, Michigan product shot the ball exceptionally well in the first half of the year. After making four three-pointers against Evansville on January 26th, Baker was sitting at 41.4% for the season from beyond the arc. In the final 14 games of the season, those numbers dropped off to 31.0% (9-for-29). She says the shooting issues were less tied to hitting the ‘freshman wall’ and more about trying to keep her head up when the ball’s not going in the basket.
“It was a little bit of a mental kind of thing,” Baker said. “I went through a shooting slump. As a lot of shooters will tell you — that happens. It happened in high school, but I feel like the coaches and my teammates were always there picking me up. ‘You got this, you're fine.’ I feel like that's what helped me get through it. I feel like towards the end of the season, I started making a little here and there, which was good, but I don't think it was really anything physical or anything wrong with my shot. I think it was just my head, which shouldn't happen because I should be confident all the time, but that stuff happens, so it's OK.”
If there is one mortal basketball sin when it comes to playing for Rechelle Turner, it may just be dropping your head after you miss a shot. Baker says she did her best to keep her body language positive when she missed shots, even though sometimes her face would betray her.
“I don't think I really ever dropped my head, but I feel like you could just tell on my face I was frustrated with myself,” Baker chuckled. “If your shot doesn't go in, you're going to be frustrated. She had to get on me probably two or three times. She was like, “You got it, next shot, you're fine. Just let it go, move on.’ That's one of my sayings: ‘Let it go, move on.’ My volleyball coach from high school taught me that. I always say that in my head when I miss.”
A year ago, just days into her first summer workouts, Baker quickly realized she’d have to add some weight over time to help her combat the physicality of the college game. Between simply eating more and, as she described it, ‘continuous weightlifting’, Baker feels she’s more prepared to handle the rigors of the Missouri Valley Conference.
There was a moment in a game against UIC in January where Baker was going up for an offensive rebound, and she got hip-checked by a UIC player into the cheerleaders. Even though the season was in its third month, that was really Baker’s ‘Welcome to College Basketball’ moment.
“The aggressive side of it, for sure, because I never really had that,” Baker said when asked what may have surprised her a bit about the college game. “In high school, obviously, people get a little pushy, but I never had somebody just go into me and shove me to the ground. I was like, ‘Whoa, OK.’ I was kind of used to it in high school, but not anything that physical.”
“I think going through a whole season just gives you a whole sense of understanding of what it takes,” Turner said. “Not only what it takes physically, but what it takes mentally. I think as much as anything, for a kid like Brax, it's as mental as it is physical. She's a very capable scorer of the basketball, and she's definitely capable of helping us be a better basketball team this year. We hope we can see continued improvement throughout the offseason, and she takes that shooting ability into non-conference play, and definitely into conference play, because we're going to need the scoring.”
Walking in the door as a freshman, Baker got to experience the dream of every college basketball player by playing in the NCAA Tournament. Doing it once was great, but the bigger challenge may just be trying to climb the mountain a second time.
“Winning our conference, and getting to go to the NCAA Tournament is a huge accomplishment,” Baker said. “At the same time, we have to let it go because we lost a lot of people. We have to restart and rebuild what we had. I feel like that's the biggest thing, just continuing to push, push, push as hard as we can, and bring the new ones along with us, and just work as hard as you possibly can.”
As much as Baker is working to get stronger and diversify her game, the biggest weapon she brings to the gym is her three-point shooting, and that’s what Rechelle Turner wants to see Baker excel at this season.
“For her to play in our system, she's got to consistently shoot the basketball,” Turner said. “We need her to be able to come in and get anywhere from two to four threes a night. The improvement on the defensive side of the floor has to come as well. She struggled in that aspect a little bit last year, but it's something that she’s spent time watching film on. She's actually spent individual workout time with coaches, working on defensive position and angles and all the things that you have to have to be successful on that side of the ball — but we're all about scoring the basketball. If you can come in and make two to four threes a night, we might let you slide a little bit on giving up a few buckets.”