RICHMOND HILL -- One thing Richmond Hill Wildcat guard Brayden Baker is going to do is fill up the score sheet.
And all he needed was two points on Friday night.
The Wildcat scoring leader netted his 1,000th point in their 56-39 loss against Brunswick.
Baker became the 14th Wildcat to conquer the feat in his 12-point performance.
He did so in 93 games.
Though there isn’t much to celebrate due to Wildcat basketball falling on tough times this season with a 5-19 record a year removed from a Class 6A quarterfinals appearance, the senior guard sent the crowd into a frenzy after knocking down a Kobe-esque turnaround fadeaway in the face of Brunswick’s Camarion Johnson off a Justus Quiller pass a minute into the game.
“It was a real special moment to me,” Baker said outside of the locker room following the game. “The whole season I’ve been striving to get there. I prepared for the game by not thinking about it. I thought of it as another game and went out there and got it done. It was nice to see all the fans go crazy.”
Baker’s 21 points per game is the 36th scoring average in Georgia for the 2021-22 season and No. 2 for Savannah area schools behind St. Andrew’s Academy’s Zyere Edwards (23.9).
His career average is 10.8 points per game in four years under Head Coach Bill Henderson.
With one regular season game to spare, Baker and the Wildcats will soon shift their focus to the Region 2-6A tournament which begins on Feb. 11.
The 6-foot-6-inch scoring machine’s next chapter will include him taking the trip up I-16 West and I-75 North where he will continue his education and basketball career at Young Harris College.
Baker committed to the Mountain Lions in November.
“It was a big decision for me, and my family and we thought it was the right place to go,” the Young Harris commit said. “It’s the right everything for me.”
Crossing the 1,000-point mark on his home floor made it even more special for the soon to be Richmond Hill graduate Baker.
“It was definitely a lot better to doing it at home because I had a lot of friends here and family watching,” the senior said. “Everybody who supported me throughout the years got to see me finally get there.”
His time spent as a Wildcat will be unforgettable for himself and onlookers that watched during his high school career.
“It’s been up and down,” Baker said in a moment of reflection. “It started off pretty solid for a while. We won a lot of games last year and the year before. Trying to get there this year but we got a lot of work to do, and we’ll see how it goes once we get to region play.”
The Wildcats will play their regular season finale on Tuesday, Feb. 8 against Effingham.