A family affair: Blakes siblings score buzzer-beaters

On Sunday afternoon, National Freshman of the Year candidate Mikayla Blakes scored the game-winning basket for Vanderbilt with 0.8 seconds left to take down No. 15 Tennessee, the first time the Commodores had beaten the Lady Vols since 2019.

But it was almost déjà vu. 

Just 24 hours earlier, Blakes’ brother, Jaylen, scored the game-winning basket for Stanford to earn the Cardinal’s first victory over North Carolina in program history. The fact that Jaylen transferred in from Duke this season made the former rivalry win even sweeter. 

“It was just an unbelievable, blessed weekend that you couldn’t script any better than this,” Blakes’ dad, Monroe, told On3. 

Jaylen is averaging a career-high 14.8 points, 5.3 assists and 1.8 steals for the Cardinal this season, while his sister is averaging 20.2 points, 3.3 assists and 2.5 steals in her first year with the Commodores.

The Blakes family is from New Jersey, but Monroe and his wife attend most of their children’s games, no matter how far. This weekend was no exception. Monroe saw Jaylen, a senior, score his game-winner and then hopped on a flight from North Carolina to Tennessee. 

“You dream of these things happening for your kids and it happened,” Monroe said. “What I’m also proud of is that they’ve done it in a great way. They hit game-winning shots, but they also put the work in, right? That’s why I’m so very happy and so proud of them, because all of their work that they put in is now coming to fruition.” 

On Saturday afternoon, Mikayla was headed to watch Vanderbilt men’s basketball face off against Tennessee with her eyes glued to her phone. It was the final seconds of her brother’s game – and her screen froze. 

She missed the shot. 

But her phone exploded with text messages of her brother’s game-winner as she dashed to the locker room to watch the play again.

Just one day later, she did it herself. 

“Coming into the game, I was like, ‘Wow, imagine if we both hit the game-winner,’ Mikayla told On3. “I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t happen because of the score and the way it was going, but it did. [Jaylen] immediately FaceTimed me four or five times. He was just screaming, he was excited and just sending a lot of text messages.”

This was more than just a game-winning shot for Mikayla. She’d committed to the Commodores one year ago on the night they suffered a loss to the Lady Vols. This was her way of rewriting history. 

“I couldn’t even script it better,” she said.

The Commodores snapped a three-game losing skid and are now 15-4 with a daunting SEC schedule in front of them. They nearly beat No. 5 LSU a week ago, but this win reinforced their belief in themselves. 

“Coach [Shea] Ralph put it best,” Mikayla said.

“We’ve been there. We’ve been close, especially coming off that game against LSU. This past week was a mindset change for our team. We really said, ‘We don’t want to be close anymore. We want to be ranked. We want to be the people who can beat those teams and be those underdogs.’ To be able to pull it off, it’s just a testament to our hard work and just a testament to how much of a family we are.”