Khamil Pierre assures Swish Appeal that fans will definitely see her dunk—and soon. There’s something special happening at Vanderbilt this season, and it extends beyond just what’s on the court.
Over the weekend, the Commodores, now 10-1, scored a decisive win against Evansville, beating the visiting team 106-40. If there was one member of the team who really pulled out all the stops in the victory, it was sophomore forward Khamil Pierre, who was responsible for 42 of those points—a new program record—and who nearly executed a fourth-quarter dunk. She says she would have easily slammed it home if she hadn’t had “dead legs” at that point in the game. In short, don’t worry Vandy fans. She’ll be dunking in your faces soon.
Freshman guard Mikayla Blakes also had a strong game with 22 points, four boards, three assists and two steals, continuing the progress that consistently has her ranked as one of the top two freshmen in women’s college basketball right now (UConn’s Sarah Strong is the other one). Blakes and Pierre—who are both Medicine, Health, and Society majors—are exciting, dominant players to watch on the court, and it turns out they’re both entirely pleasant to speak to off the court, too.
Vandy is in an interesting period of building right now. Head coach Shea Ralph has a strong group of athletes and a vision that’s becoming clear to those of us lucky enough to share the Memorial Coliseum with them. That’s in part due to her own values, and those shared by her athletes. The school stood out during Pierre’s recruiting experience primarily because, as she told Swish Appeal, “I’m a super genuine kid, and I function really well around genuine people, and I felt like that was exactly what Vanderbilt had to offer.”
Pierre received 45 Division I offers while participating in a three-month summer season with the AAU program Arizona Elite. This was after having spent most of her youth focused on soccer. In fact, she didn’t get serious about basketball until her sophomore year of high school, and she joined Arizona Elite the summer between junior and senior years. Receiving such a tidal wave of interest and attention “was shocking to me,” Pierre said. Schools didn’t know who she was, but they could tell that she could hoop—and they all wanted in. The number of phone calls was “overwhelming” at times, but in the end, Pierre feels like she made the right choice.
Blakes, who played at Rutgers Prep in New Jersey, was also recruited by UCLA, Stanford, Rutgers, Indiana, Tennessee and Wisconsin. She similarly expressed a strong respect for Ralph and Vandy’s program. “She was one of the coaches I really felt a relationship with,” Blakes said of Ralph, sharing with Swish Appeal, “I feel like I could tell her anything, and I felt like she was looking out for my best interests.” “She’s a family woman, and just seeing the progress and what she’s built here at Vanderbilt, I just really wanted to be part of it,” she continued. “I believed in her like she believed in me.”
Ralph, who was named head coach of the team in 2021 after spending several years as an assistant coach for UConn, comes from an esteemed basketball background. Her mother, Marsha Lake, represented the United States at the World University Games in Russia in 1973, was UNC’s first female All-American and was part of the group of young women who ushered in the Title IX era. She also coached her daughter, helping guide her toward her own time as a player at UConn.
As for this season, Blakes and Pierre share a common goal: being as good as they, and their teammates, can be. When asked what they wanted for themselves as individuals, both young women quickly pivoted the conversation to what they want for their team as a whole. This pattern of humility and grace was consistent between Blakes and Pierre throughout our separate interviews, and speaks volumes about the culture and coaching at Vanderbilt. In a sport that’s technically a team sport but often focused on individual feats and goals, it was special to speak to team-minded athletes.
“I’m more focused on a team goal. I think just getting into a tournament last year was really cool,” Blakes said. “I think just coming to this team, I want to take us further and I believe we can go a lot further than what we did last year. So I think that’s probably my main goal and I guess whatever accolades come with that, I’ll accept them. But I’m just not really hunting something down. It’s just playing my best and doing what I can.”
“I look up to Coach Ralph,” Pierre emphasized. “I feel like she’s a really good, well-put-together woman. I also look up to my mom, and I have some teammates who I really look up to, who do a lot for me. Jordyn Oliver, a lot of people don’t know, but she’s really my brain on the court. She helps me be where I need to be. She keeps me calm and ready.” “We have a lot of players like that,” she added. “Without them, I wouldn’t be much, so I’m really grateful for that.”
