For Vanderbilt women’s basketball, winning three individual awards was a team honor.
The Commodores became the sixth team ever to win SEC player, coach and freshman of the year honors in the same season. Mikayla Blakes took home Player of the Year, Aubrey Galvan was Freshman of the Year and Shea Ralph as SEC Coach of the Year.
Vanderbilt (27-3) set school records for regular-season and conference wins. It finished tied for second in the SEC and earned the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament, which begins March 4 in Greenville, South Carolina.
Blakes led the country in scoring with 27.1 points per game and became the first player since 2000 to average more than 30 points in SEC games.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know that usually the teams that win are the ones that are going to get this award,” Ralph said March 3. “So it’s going to sound corny, but it’s a team effort. It’s a team award.”
Despite returning only one starter (Blakes), Vanderbilt is a projected No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Ralph has often spoken of Blakes’ intense desire and her high scoring output as a function of what it takes to win.
Thus, as expected, Blakes credited her teammates in part for the accolade.
“It’s not just an individual award,” she said. “It goes to the whole team as well. So couldn’t be here without my teammates and my coaching staff as well . . . I just want to do whatever my team needed me to do and put me in that position to be able to win.”
An unranked recruit in high school, Galvan worked her way up to Freshman of the Year by becoming Vanderbilt’s starting point guard from day one. She averaged 12.9 points per game, along with 5.9 assists and 2.7 steals. She led all freshmen in assists nationally.
Galvan said that it was an honor to even be considered for the award.
“I was just going to play basketball,” she said. “That’s kind of all you need. I wasn’t focused on any awards, any of that. I just wanted to win games and then also just have fun with my teammates, which I’ve been doing. So I feel like that means more.”
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at [email protected] or on X @aria_gerson.
