The 2024-25 NCAA Women’s Basketball season has been filled with history and intrigue.
Few teams across the country have contributed to that excitement more than the Vanderbilt Commodores, who have broken all sorts of records on their way to their first true NCAA Tournament bid since 2013-14. The Black and Gold may have made the Big Dance last year, but they had to take on Columbia in the First Four in order to do so.
The Commodores are squarely in this time around, thanks to a 22-10 (8-8) record that saw the team end its regular season with wins over Texas A&M and Missouri. They also accumulated three ranked wins.
Among those three wins was a little chunk of history. Vanderbilt beat Tennessee twice — once at home and once in the SEC Tournament this week — for the first time ever. It’s hard to believe that in the 47 years that Vanderbilt has had a women’s basketball program, the team has never beaten the Lady Volunteers two times in the same season.
I guess that’s what happens when you have the SEC Freshman of the Year. Mikayla Blakes has been everything as advertised for the Commodores and earned Vanderbilt’s first freshman of the year award since Donna Harris in 1989-90. She is also the first first-year to make the All-SEC First Team since Aliyah Boston — who eventually went on to be the No. 1 pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft — did it in 2020. That’s pretty elite company for Blakes to be in.
She also broke the NCAA freshman scoring record twice, once on Jan. 30 against Florida with 53 points and again on Feb. 16 with 55 points against Auburn. Both of those broke Vanderbilt’s single-game scoring record, too. She set the program record for most SEC Freshman of the Week (7) and USBWA Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Week (4) selections.
I could talk about Blakes for this entire article. She’s that good. It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination by any means — in fact, it’s looking more likely that it will happen — that the New Jersey native hears her name called first in the WNBA Draft in a few years. To average 26.9 points per game in the SEC (league-leading) as a first-year is sensational, and she deserves a ton of credit for what she has done.
The question, of course, is why Blakes was the only one given credit.
An egregious snub
The All-SEC teams were announced on March 4. The first team featured nine players (including Blakes) and the second team featured eight more.
Sophomore Khamil Pierre was not listed on either team.
No one in the world could convince me that Pierre wasn’t deserving of a spot on either of these teams. How does one average 20.8 points (fourth in the SEC), 9.6 rebounds (second) and 3.2 steals (second) per game against some of the best teams in the country and not get honored as a top 17 player in her conference? She made the most field goals of any player in the SEC and posted 15 double-doubles, which ranked No. 2 among all SEC athletes.
That’s a whole lot of top-5 stats for a player who apparently isn’t even top 17 in her conference.
The SEC is the best league in the country, and it accordingly has some of the best players in the country, but let’s take a step back and look at it statistically. Here are some of the stats for forwards and centers that made the All-SEC teams.
Joyce Edwards of South Carolina averaged 13 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game. She shot just five percent better from the field than Pierre but did not make a 3-pointer. Kentucky’s Clara Strack posted averages of 15.3 points, 9.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks. Jerkalia Jordan from Mississippi State put up 16.1 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.0 steals.
The list goes on, because those are just forwards. Guards Te-Hina Paopao and MiLaysia Fulwiley from South Carolina averaged 10.2 and 11.9 points per game, respectively. Neither posted greater than 3 assists, rebounds, steals or blocks. Neither shot over 50% from the field — which Pierre did.
Impact goes beyond stats, but anyone who has watched the Commodores this season knows that Pierre has been just as critical to their success as Blakes. And even then, you need to consider stats. The impact argument should go out of the window when we’re comparing Pierre to a player who she’s averaging significantly more points, rebounds and steals — among other stats — than. Don’t want to hear it from me? Take it from head coach Shea Ralph.
A statement from Coach Ralph:#AnchorDown pic.twitter.com/N9nOTU1mhy
— Vanderbilt WBB (@VandyWBB) March 5, 2025
This isn’t to tear down any of these players. Their performances this season are also award-worthy, and they were honored rightfully so. Beyond that, the first-place team in the SEC deserves proper representation on the All-SEC teams, but at what cost? Excluding one of the NCAA’s most productive players — who is in the process of leading her team to its best season in over a decade — doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the answer was just to take Pierre onto one of these teams, making the total 18 instead of 17.
Got Moore
In my preview of the SEC Tournament, I wrote about how Vanderbilt needed Iyana Moore to step up. The senior is one of the most experienced players on the team and is one of just three (Pierre and Jordyn Oliver are the others) of Vanderbilt’s consistent rotation players who played in the team’s NCAA Tournament game last year. Justine Pissott, Aga Makurat, Jada Brown and Aiyana Mitchell all got minutes in the Big Dance last season, but none of them are X-factors for Vanderbilt.
Moore is.
She led the team with 22 points in its win over Columbia last year. Her 15 points also led all Commodores in their second-round loss to Baylor.
Moore has had a turbulent 2024-25 season but ended it brilliantly. She posted 18 points and 7 assists against Missouri in the regular season finale before exploding for 23 points (4-of-4 from 3-point range) in the team’s history-making win over Tennessee.
She even played well against No.5 South Carolina in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament — knocking down 4-of-9 3-pointers against one of the best defenses in the country. The first half was rough, as the Commodores fell into a 25-point hole at halftime, but Moore helped them claw back and bring the deficit within 6 points, but the Gamecocks proved unstoppable down the stretch.
Still, the postseason heroics that Moore displayed in March Madness last year were in full view against Tennessee and parts of the South Carolina game. When Vanderbilt couldn’t get anything from Blakes and Pierre in the first half (combined 13 points), the senior guard poured in 11 of her own to stave off a pair of Tennessee runs and keep Vanderbilt afloat.
She isn’t the key to this team — Pierre and Blakes still hold that title — but she is a key contributor and will be pivotal to Vanderbilt’s chances of making it out of the opening weekend.
Watching and waiting
It’s a waiting game for Ralph and Co. from here on out. They’ll get their longest break of the year — at least two full weeks — as they wait to find out their tournament fate on Selection Sunday, March 16. Their first games of the NCAA Tournament will be on either March 21 or 22, so the Commodores will have a chance to rest up before then.
Other than Sacha Washington’s season-ending non-basketball injury, the Black and Gold have managed to avoid the injury bug. Every key contributor on the team has played in either 30 or 31 games.
That said, a grueling 16-game SEC schedule certainly takes a toll on players, and just because they’re playing doesn’t mean that they’re 100% healthy. Leilani Kapinus has been on and off the SEC Student-Athlete Availability Report, and Pierre had a couple of injury scares earlier in the year.
Two weeks of rest will do wonders for this team specifically. Ralph likes to keep a tight lineup — only eight players got time in the win over Tennessee — and her players accordingly pick up extra minutes because of it. Beyond that, Vanderbilt’s scheme, which is filled with a lot of pressing and high-intensity defense, will benefit from a group of players with fresh legs.
Most predictions have Vanderbilt as a seven seed. Charlie Creme of ESPN currently has the team going to Storrs as a No. 7. There, the Commodores would take on No. 10 Oregon before playing the winner of UConn and Albany. Creme’s projections are just that — projections — but a Ralph vs. Geno Auriemma grudge match would be pretty exciting. I’m sure the committee (and the NCAA Tournament’s TV ratings) wouldn’t mind seeing Ralph go back to her alma mater.
Her Hoop Stats has Vanderbilt as a No. 7 taking on No. 10 Washington in the Storrs region as well. The NCAA also has Vanderbilt as a seven seed, this time in Notre Dame’s region, taking on No. 10 Columbia in a rematch of last year’s thriller.
It’s clear that, no matter where they get sent, the Commodores are going to have to get through an elite team, be it UConn, Notre Dame or any of the other one and two seeds. For now, though, Vanderbilt will just have to watch and wait to learn their fate.
