LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Athletic Club announced Tuesday that Vanderbilt women’s basketball sophomore Mikayla Blakes has been named to its 2025-26 John R. Wooden Award Preseason Top 50 Watch List.
The Wooden Award Watch List is the latest honor for Blakes. The Somerset, New Jersey, native is one of 50 players from across NCAA Division I to be considered. Created in 1976, the John R. Wooden Award is one of the most prestigious honors in college basketball, recognizing the most outstanding player for men and women.
It is the fourth preseason national player of the year watch list that Blakes has been named to this season. The guard has been selected to the USBWA Anne Meyers Drysdale National Player of the Year Watch List, the Jersey Mike’s Naismith Trophy Women’s College Player of the Year Watch List and the Wade Trophy Watch List.
Additionally, Blakes has been named to The Athletic Preseason All-America first team and the USA TODAY Sports All-America second team. Blakes is also on the Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year Watch List and was named preseason first-team All-SEC by the league’s coaches and media.
The All-American leads Vanderbilt in scoring at 22.7 points per game this season, as she has helped the Commodores get off to a 3-0 start to the 2025-26 campaign. Blakes’ scoring average currently ranks second in the SEC, while it is 14th-best in the NCAA.
Blakes is coming off the most successful freshman campaign in program history. She averaged 23.3 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.4 steals per game a season ago. Her 23.3 points per game average ranked first among all NCAA Division I freshmen, while she led first-year players nationally in seven different categories. She also posted the second-highest scoring average (23.3 ppg) in a season in school history and scored the second-most points (769).
The guard was named the USBWA Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Year last season, making her the first Commodore to win a National Freshman of the Year honor from any publication. She was also named an All-American by six different publications during her rookie campaign.
Along with her national honors, Blakes was selected as the SEC Freshman of the Year by the league’s coaches and was named the SEC Newcomer of the Year by USA Today in 2024-25. The guard set the NCAA Division I single-game scoring record for a freshman by scoring 55 points in an overtime win at Auburn on Feb. 16, 2025. Blakes twice set the SEC and Vanderbilt single-game scoring records, as she first had 53 points at Florida on Jan. 30, then topped that performance with a 55-point effort at Auburn. She is the second NCAA Division I player in NCAA history to score 53-plus points in multiple games in a season and the first since the 1988-89 campaign.
The No. 17-ranked Vanderbilt women’s basketball team concludes its two-game nonconference road trip on Wednesday, as the Commodores travel to Western Kentucky. Tipoff against the Lady Toppers is set for 6:30 p.m. CT and streams live on ESPN+.
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