Mikayla Blakes Wins National Award: The Anchor – Sports Illustrated

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Vanderbilt women’s basketball star Mikayla Blakes is taking home some more hardware post-Vanderbilt’s 2025-2026 season.
Thursday afternoon, the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame announced that Blakes is the recipient of this year’s Anne Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year Award for her performance this season. Blakes is the first Vanderbilt player to earn a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame starting five award. The award has been given annually in women’s hoops since 2018
The announcement of the award should not come to a surprise to anyone. Blakes lit the scoreboards on fire all season and stuffed statsheets game in and game out. The sophomore was the heartbeat of Vanderbilt’s 29-5 team throughout the season.
Blakes helped lead the Commodores to a program record 29-5 record while averaging 27 points per game on the season and 30 points per game during conference play. Her performance on the offensive end led Division I women’s basketball in scoring as the Somerset, New Jersey native was also named a finalist for the Player of the Year Award.
Blakes helped Vanderbilt far exceed preseason expectations, taking the program to places it has not been to in years. She also helped the Commodores set a program record for the most conference wins in a season as they went 13-3 in SEC play.
Those performances led to a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and an appearance in this season’s Sweet 16.
13 days
Vanderbilt women’s tennis beat Arkansas 7-0.
Vanderbilt lacrosse beat East Carolina 15-13.
Vanderbilt men’s tennis lost to No. 13 South Carolina 4-1.
Vanderbilt bowling won the Rochester Regional Championship.
Vanderbilt men’s golf at the Mason Rudolph Championship, Day 3 at 8 a.m. CT.
Good to be home 🫶 pic.twitter.com/FRSld225oR
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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