NASHVILLE, Tenn. – On Tuesday, the College Sports Communicators (CSC) announced that Vanderbilt women’s basketball sophomore Mikayla Blakes was named to the 2025-26 Academic All-America first team.
Blakes becomes the second Commodore women’s basketball player to earn Academic All-America first team honors from the CSC, formerly CoSIDA. The sophomore guard joins Michelle Palmisano, who earned first-team honors in 1996-97. Overall, Blakes is just the fifth player from Vanderbilt to be named a CSC Academic All-American, while she is the first since Christina Wirth’s third-team selection in 2008-09.
The Somerset, New Jersey, native, who is majoring in Medicine, Health and Society, holds a 3.73 grade point average. To be eligible for the CSC Academic All-America team, student-athletes must be at least a sophomore, hold a cumulative GPA of 3.50, and have played in 90 percent of their team’s games or started in 66 percent of contests.
The sophomore guard averaged 27.0 points, 4.5 assists and 2.9 steals per game this season. Her 27.0 points per game led NCAA Division I in scoring and set the Vanderbilt single-season scoring record. Her 918 points are the most scored in a season in SEC history and set the NCAA’s all-time sophomore scoring record. Blakes had 13 games with 30 or more points, which led the nation and is the most 30-point performances by an SEC player this century.
The guard has been racking up the awards during the 2025-26 postseason. Blakes was named the 2026 Anne Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Additionally, she has been selected as a first-team All-American by the WBCA, Associated Press, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, The Athletic, USA Today, ESPN and The Sporting News. The sophomore guard was named the 2025-26 SEC Player of the Year by both the league’s coaches and USA Today, and All-SEC first team by both outlets. Additionally, she has been named a finalist for the Wooden Award and the Honda Award, while she was also a finalist for the Naismith Trophy Player of the Year and the Wade Trophy.
The Anchored for Her Campaign
Vanderbilt launched the Anchored for Her campaign to honor its pioneering female student-athletes and cement the university’s place as the premier destination for women’s sports ahead of next year’s 50th anniversary of its varsity women’s teams. Bolstered by lead gifts from Vanderbilt Board of Trust members Nina Kohler and Kathleen Justice-Moore, JD’91, Anchored for Her’s initial $50 million goal will fuel investment in sustainable success for a new era of collegiate athletics through facility enhancements, endowed scholarships, coaching and staff positions, capital support and naming opportunities, team-specific Excellence Funds, the Women’s Athletics General Fund and the Competitive Excellence Fund.
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