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Abby Pavia already has three scholarship offers and has caught the attention of the staff at Vanderbilt. Aimee Montoya (@flicksbyaims)
At a high school basketball game in New Mexico last month, a group of students rooting for the home team showed up decked out in matching T-shirts.
On the front was a picture of Diego Pavia, the fiery, love-him-or-hate-him former Vanderbilt quarterback who took college football by storm in 2025 and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. On the back was a picture of Fernando Mendoza, the Indiana quarterback who beat out Pavia for the Heisman and led the Hoosiers to the national championship.
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Abrielle Pavia, the point guard for the visitors, was the target of the shirts — and of the heckling by the students at Los Lunas High. Her response? The 15-year-old high school freshman scored a career-high 39 points, capped off by a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer, to go along with 12 rebounds and four steals to lead Albuquerque High to a 45-42 win. If you want help with the math, she scored 86.7 percent of her team’s points.
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After the game, the fans who spent the previous two hours taunting her asked for her autograph. She posed for a few photos instead.
“I feel like a lot of the (opposing) student sections or the crowds just try to get in my head about Diego,” said Pavia, who goes by Abby. “I like it when they do it because it fuels me.”
Abby — the baby of the family and the only girl of the four Pavia siblings — might be a tad less famous than her big bro at the moment. But she’s just as competitive, just as confident and just as entertaining as Diego, her closest sibling in age. And if all goes according to plan, another fearless Pavia will be playing a starring role in college in a few years. Maybe even at Vanderbilt, where her brother spent the last two seasons. Abby, who regularly made the trip to Nashville for Diego’s home games, has visited with Vanderbilt head coach Shea Ralph, whose staff is actively evaluating her.
“I just love the way that she coaches. You can tell that she really cares about her players,” Pavia said of Ralph and the No. 5 Commodores, in the midst of one of their best seasons in program history.
“I know Shea probably loves Abby’s grit, her toughness,” said Teri Morrison, Pavia’s coach at Albuquerque High. “I think we’ll see (Vanderbilt) a little bit more this summer on the (grassroots) circuit.”
Pavia started playing basketball when she was about 5 years old after she accompanied Diego to one of his youth basketball events in Las Vegas. A father of another player on the team asked Abby if she had any interest in basketball, and soon she was playing on an all-boys team.
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She picked up her first Division I offer, from New Mexico, in the summer between seventh and eighth grade after attending a camp at her hometown school. Last May, UNLV got into the mix with an offer after the staff watched her play in an EYBL tournament. A few months later, Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland offered.
“Those things that you love about Diego are what shines in her,” said Morrison, who raves about Abby’s speed, strength and leaping ability. “She’s kind and gentle and fun, but on the court she’s feisty, and she will step over you to get a basket.”
Morrison has been in coaching for 40-plus years and spent much of her career in Texas. She’s been around plenty of All-Americans, and one of her closest friends is LSU head coach Kim Mulkey. So when she says she’s never seen anything quite like Pavia’s outburst against Los Lunas, she’s got a pretty big frame of reference.
Pavia said she knew she was in for a big day from the very first play of the game, a mental mindset she credits to Diego. She might not talk as much trash as her older brother — don’t worry, she’s still got plenty of “ish” to her, Morrison jokes — but she has the same will to win. Because both are undersized, Diego at 5 feet 10 and Abby at 5 feet 5, the Pavias play with an edge.
“I always have that confidence, just like Diego,” Abby said. “He instills that confidence in me. It’s like a kill-or-be-killed thing, and I want to be the killer. So that’s just the mindset that I have to have. I think it just runs in our family.”
Abby is currently averaging 21.2 points per game and has scored at least 30 points six times. She’s also averaging 8.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 3.9 steals per game.
Just days after her 39-point game, Diego took to social media to sing his little sister’s praises, tagging the Vanderbilt women’s basketball account in the process.
THE BEST HOOPER IN THE COUNTRY‼️ PROUD OF YOU LIL SIS..@VandyWBB 👀👀 https://t.co/O1Gxc9aWAi
— Diego Pavia (@diegopavia02) February 17, 2026
Not that he hasn’t already put in a word with Ralph’s staff for his sister.
“He told me, ‘Hey, I literally went up to the Vanderbilt coach and showed them your highlights and said that they need to start getting on you,’” Abby said. “So that’s just the love that we both show to each other.”
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Abby said she doesn’t believe Vanderbilt would be evaluating her at the moment — she’s still a freshman, after all — if it weren’t for Diego. But Ralph has assured her that the Commodores’ potential interest isn’t just because of her famous last name. “(Ralph said) I’m a baller,” Pavia said.
Next up for little Pavia and Albuquerque is the Class 5A state championships, which start tonight.
In the meantime, she’s got plenty of time to think about her college career.
“After high school, I would just love to go play basketball in college for a top-five school,” Abby said. “Just all the work that I put in and that I’m gonna continue to put in, I want to go play in college.”
“The gym,” Morrison followed, “is her place.”
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Grace Raynor is a staff writer for The Athletic covering recruiting and southeastern college football. A native of western North Carolina, she graduated from the University of North Carolina. Follow Grace on Twitter @gmraynor
