Mikayla Blakes just did something that neither Caitlin Clark nor any other college basketball player has accomplished in the last 25 years.
The Vanderbilt sophomore dropped 34 points on No. 4 Texas Thursday night, extending her streak to four consecutive 30-point games and placing herself alongside Paige Bueckers and Stephen Curry as the only players this century to score 100-plus points over a three-game span where every game was a win against an AP Top 25 opponent.
That’s the company Blakes is keeping now. Not Clark. Not JuJu Watkins. Bueckers and Curry.
Blakes’ Eight-Day Tear Makes Her the National POY Frontrunner
The numbers border on absurd. In an eight-day stretch, Blakes torched No. 16 Kentucky for 37 points in an 84-83 road win, buried No. 10 Oklahoma with 34 in a 102-86 blowout at home, then carved up the Longhorns for another 34 in an 86-70 demolition that wasn’t as close as the final score suggests. That’s 105 points against three ranked opponents. Three wins. Zero losses.
Vanderbilt coach Shea Ralph isn’t being coy about what this means for Blakes’ award candidacy. She’s going on offense.
“Prove me wrong that that’s not the SEC Player of the Year and the National Player of the Year,” Ralph declared postgame, pointing toward her star.
Mikayla Blakes (2/12/26) pic.twitter.com/V2ZIriCcYw
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The 34 points against Texas carry particular weight. They represent the most ever scored against a Vic Schaefer-coached Texas team, a program that entered Thursday night among the best in the nation in points allowed per game.
Blakes shot 9-for-19 from the field, 3-for-6 from three, and went 13-for-15 at the free-throw line while Schaefer cycled through defensive looks that couldn’t slow her down. The Longhorns had no answers. Schaefer sat point guard Rori Harmon for the final 15 minutes of the game, a decision that spoke to his frustration with a unit that trailed by as many as 26.
The performance also made Blakes the first SEC player in the last 25 seasons to string together four consecutive 30-point games. She joins Clark and Watkins as the only players in the last five seasons with multiple 30-point games against top-five opponents in a single year.
Her scoring average now sits at 26.2 points per game, tops in Division I. She recently passed Iowa State’s Audi Crooks for the national lead. The gap keeps widening.
Sarah Strong vs. Mikayla Blakes: The National POY Race Heats Up
UConn’s Sarah Strong remains the betting favorite for the Naismith Award, and for good reason. The Huskies are undefeated with a dominant average margin of victory, and Strong’s efficiency numbers are otherworldly. She plays fewer minutes because UConn rarely needs her in the fourth quarter.
But Blakes is making this a conversation when it looked like a coronation two weeks ago.
The difference is context. Strong plays on a dominant team in the Big East. Blakes is dragging Vanderbilt through a brutally competitive SEC, and she’s doing it against the best opponents on her schedule. Her four-game 30-point streak came against ranked teams. All wins. The Commodores are now 24-2 overall, 10-2 in conference play, and in strong position for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Blakes isn’t chasing hardware. She made that clear after the Texas win.
“Honestly, it’s a great award but I think that’s not my goal,” she told SportsCenter. “I think my goal is just to do whatever my teammates need me to do. We want to go deep and far into the March Madness tournament and the SEC tournament. So whatever comes with that comes with that.”
Vanderbilt has three ranked opponents in its remaining regular-season games: No. 18 Kentucky, No. 23 Alabama, and No. 22 Tennessee. If Blakes keeps performing at this level, the national conversation will shift whether she wants it to or not.
The last time a player put together a stretch like this against ranked competition, it was Curry carrying Davidson through the 2008 NCAA Tournament with 40, 30, and 33 points against Gonzaga, Georgetown, and Wisconsin. Before that, it was Bueckers doing what Bueckers does. Now it’s Blakes, a 20-year-old from Somerset, New Jersey, rewriting what’s possible in the SEC.
Ralph knows what she’s watching. She was an assistant coach at UConn for 13 seasons after playing there. She’s been around greatness her entire career. And she’s telling anyone who will listen that Blakes is the best player in the country.
The stats back her up. The wins back her up. The only question left is whether voters are paying attention.