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How Shea Ralph constructed Vanderbilt girls’s basketball roster round Mikayla Blakes


For the previous two years, Mikayla Blakes has been the high-scoring engine of Vanderbilt girls’s basketball.

Coach Shea Ralph’s aim for 2026-27 is that the Commodores could have sufficient items round Blakes to free her as much as do every little thing else − to be a pacesetter and to do extra with out the ball.

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“How can she get higher?” Ralph mentioned. “It is in management, persevering with to make use of her voice, it is to find different methods to impression the sport now that we’re persevering with to place items round her. The majority of the scoring has needed to lean on her shoulders. That does not imply she’s not going to attain the ball. She will nonetheless do this very properly. However now there’s different ways in which we will open up her recreation to impression successful as a result of we’re capable of put gamers round her.”

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Mikayla Blakes, Vanderbilt girls’s basketball star guard with 55-point recreation

FORT WORTH, TEXAS – MARCH 27: Mikayla Blakes #1 of the Vanderbilt Commodores shoots the ball Cassandre Prosper #8 of the Notre Dame Preventing Irish through the third quarter within the Candy Sixteen of the 2026 NCAA Girls’s Basketball Match at Dickies Area on March 27, 2026 in Fort Price, Texas. (Photograph by Stacy Revere/Getty Pictures)

(Stacy Revere, Getty Pictures)

Blakes was the 2026 SEC Participant of the 12 months and led the nation in scoring with 27 factors per recreation. She additionally added on 4.1 rebounds and 4.5 assists per recreation. Alongside her, Aubrey Galvan emerged as SEC Freshman of the 12 months after averaging 13.5 factors and 5.7 assists per recreation and the group made the Candy 16.

Blakes and Galvan are again, however Vanderbilt’s prime function gamers should not after the departures of Justine Pissott, Ndjakalenga Mwnentanda and Sacha Washington, the opposite three members of its 2025-26 beginning lineup. Of their place, Ralph introduced in transfers Vernell Atamah and Mia Woolfolk and freshmen Olivia Jones, Jhai Johnson and Sther Ubaka.

Ralph mentioned that the Commodores acquired what they wanted within the switch portal. She described Atamah as an elite shooter, whereas Woolfolk is a flexible large with SEC expertise after transferring from Georgia who has performed properly towards Vanderbilt prior to now.

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Woolfolk, specifically, may broaden her recreation in new methods. With the Bulldogs, she averaged 13.9 factors per recreation in 2025-26 and shot 60.2% from the sphere, however she has tried just one three prior to now two years. Whereas it might not come straight away, Vanderbilt is engaged on increasing her vary and enjoying extra on the perimeter, which may permit her to play with returning bigs Aiyana Mitchell and Aalyah Del Rosario.

“Giving Mia the chance to develop exterior the lane has been actually enjoyable up to now. It’ll take a while. … What’s distinctive about Mia is that she will be able to additionally, as soon as we get her to that time, when she continues to develop, dominate on the perimeter. She will do each.”

The freshman class is led by Jones, a 5-star guard, whose depth and consistency reminds Ralph of Blakes. There’s additionally 4-star ahead Johnson, who is a wonderful rebounder, and Ubaka, who brings some physicality as a combo-forward.

“Olivia Jones has been unimaginable,” Ralph mentioned. “One among our most constant gamers in follow, which says so much a couple of freshman, jogs my memory a ton of Mikayla. I do not suppose it is truthful to say that, since you do not wish to examine the 2, however when it comes to her impression on our program, on our group, the depth that she practices with, the willpower, the perspective she brings day by day, her persona, it jogs my memory loads of a number of the best gamers I’ve coached.”

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Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.

This text initially appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Shea Ralph constructed Vanderbilt girls’s basketball roster round Mikayla Blakes



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