Indiana Makes Top 7 for 2024 5-Star Guard Mikayla Blakes

Five-star Mikayla Blakes announced her top schools for her college decision on Saturday, and included Indiana in her top-seven. Here's a look at what the 2024 guard could bring to coach Teri Moren's team.

Mikayla Blakes — a 5-star women's basketball prospect in the class of 2024 — announced her top seven schools for her college decision on Saturday, and Teri Moren's Indiana Hoosiers made the cut. 

Also in consideration for Blakes are Rutgers, Stanford, Tennessee, UCLA, Vanderbilt and Wisconsin, according to her post. 

"[Blakes] is not just college good. She's already on a professional track for me," Mark Schindler told Hoosiers Now. Schindler is a lead writer for WNBA.com and host of the women's basketball podcast They Got Now, and is one of the preeminent experts on women's basketball in the public sphere. 

"She is legit, with a really insanely good first step and good vertical pop," Schindler said. "[Blakes] is a pretty good passer too, but I would consider her a little more score-first. She can shoot off the catch. She can relocate, and she's solid defensively. She's so good."

Blakes is also the younger sister of current Duke point guard Jaylen Blakes, who committed to the Blue Devils as a three-star prospect out of New Jersey, and is now entering his third season of college ball. 

Blakes plays high school basketball at Rutgers Prep in Somerset, N.J., and played on the AAU team Philly Rise 17U during Nike EYBL games this past year. 

Indiana currently has two commits in the class of 2024 in forwards Faith Wiseman and Sydney Fenn. Wiseman plays for Indian Creek High School in Trafalgar, Ind., while Fenn is originally from Buffalo, N.Y., but plays high school basketball in Arizona for legendary prep school AZ Compass. The Hoosiers also have a high-profile commit in the class of 2025 in Maya Makalusky, who I wrote a full-length feature on in July. 

Moren and Indiana are no strangers to bringing in talented freshmen (see Yarden Garzon in 2022-23, and likely Julianna LaMendola in 2023-24 after what she showed in Greece), and Blakes is certainly of that caliber. 

"[Blakes] can handle multiple coverages and dissecting it, and she probably was one of the 3-4 best drivers I saw at EYBL out of all the guards," Schindler told Hoosiers Now. 

"She would be awesome for IU."

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