Amaris Baker is next up in Drexel’s long lineage of producing prolific scorers in women’s hoops

Drexel has a history of developing gifted offensive talent. From Gabriela Mărginean to Keishana Washington, the Dragons have a rich history of top scorers. The latest scoring sensation on 33rd and Market hails from Philly — senior guard Amaris Baker.

Baker has been sensational in her second year at Drexel and averages 17.3 points and 3.6 rebounds. Baker has scored at least 20 points in four of the Dragons’ seven games this season.

A natural three-level scorer who can make it look effortless, the South Philly native’s work ethic is anything but. From a young age, Baker sought the highest competition she could by playing AAU basketball against boys.

“Playing against boys, especially young, was pretty hard,” she said. “I never got passed the basketball, and I would cry after every game. My dad was the coach, so he’d be like, ‘If you want them to pass you the ball, you need to work out.’ So I would wake him up at 6 a.m., and we would work out every morning. I got better, I started receiving the basketball and scoring, and that gave me confidence that I could play against anybody.”

After graduating from Cardinal O’Hara, Baker spent a season at Kennesaw State. After one season, she entered the transfer portal looking to move closer to home, which led her to Bryn Mawr-based junior college Harcum College. Baker put her scoring prowess on full display and was the leading scorer in NJCAA Division II with 27 points per game while leading Harcum to a 30-win season.

With that stellar season under her belt, Baker garnered significant interest from Division I universities. Drexel checked all of the boxes for Baker.

“With Drexel, it’s really close to home, and it’s a very successful program,” Baker said. “We have an amazing coaching staff, and they all bring something powerful to the program. I definitely wanted to be around that type of environment where I could develop, just knowing the amount of players that they’ve had in the past, where even after Drexel, they’re very successful.”

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Baker committed to Drexel to experience the program’s success and player development, and it did not take long for her to find both. Baker led the Dragons’ on a Cinderella run as the seventh seed to win the Coastal Athletic Association’s championship and was the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after leading her team in scoring each game.

Although her first season at Drexel was one to remember, the 2023-24 women’s basketball season was anything but easy. The Dragons have struggled to find an offensive identity for most of the season, which led to inconsistent performances. But Baker believes that struggle catalyzed the team’s ability to go on last season’s run, which ended in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“When you’re getting beat up so much, you get tired of it,” Baker said. “So it’s like, ‘Are we going to allow ourselves to get beat up, or are going to fight back?’ It was just about knowing within ourselves that everyone on our team was capable.”

The season’s turning point came, “in the North Carolina A&T game [on March 7],” Baker said. “Everyone was just hitting shots. ... …That was our spark. Once we saw what we knew we were capable of doing, we finally let loose, took the weight off our shoulders, and we just went out there and just had fun. I felt like we were just missing that aspect of basketball. If you’re not having fun, then why are you even out there? We started having fun, and we played with each other, and we had that successful outcome in the end.”

Now in her final season of college basketball, Baker is the face of a program that features newcomers in important roles. As a captain, Baker has one goal in mind for them: getting her new teammates a ring, too.

“We have a lot of new faces, and they were at the [CAA championship] ring ceremony on opening night,
and it made me feel bad because they should get to have a ring as well,” Baker said. “So it’s just something in me that was like they need to experience that. We’re just trying to come in every single day, work hard, and tell them that we can experience this together.”

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