UConn needs Nika Muhl’s intensity in NCAA Tournament
UConn freshman Nika Muhl sounded like a sprightly tour guide, speaking fondly of life in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.
She described Travno, the neighborhood of her youth in Novi Zagreb, or New Zagreb. Benches line the street outside her family’s third-floor condominium, where she’d often sit chatting with friends past 1 a.m. She has spent a lot of time on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, southwest of the city.
Muhl, a mask over her smile during this Zoom call, excitedly mentioned her love for “every corner of this little place I live in.” Then a shift in conversation to basketball became a reminder that, like a city of 1 million that maintains a small-town feel, a person’s constitution can be wonderfully complex in how it is displayed.
Muhl’s favorite player is Dennis Rodman. Of course. Rodman retired from the NBA before she was born in April 2001. But … of course. Have you seen Muhl play?
“I feel like his passion is what I really look up to,” she said. “And, obviously, he’s crazy off the court, too, which I really love. He plays with so much passion and emotion. … My eye kind of always went to Dennis Rodman, to this guy that just would rebound the ball and throw himself on his head to get the ball.”
Muhl, a guard, has pushed her personality deep into the identity of this UConn team, which opened the NCAA Tournament and pursuit of a 12th national championship on Sunday against High Point in San Antonio.
The Huskies have become a markedly better team since Geno Auriemma settled on Muhl as a starter in early February. She is a perimeter presence affectionately and accurately referred to as a “gnat” by junior forward Evina Westbrook. She is a diving-here and grimacing-there bolt of irritated intensity, embracing a role not everyone is cut out for.
“I really like to do the dirty work,” she said.
In 21 games, 14 starts, Muhl is averaging 5.1 points, 2.9 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 1.8 steals. Her shooting percentages are up to 38 overall and 34.8 on 3-pointers after cold start. Her value isn’t measured in numbers alone.
“We needed to get a little better defensively on the perimeter, needed to get a little more aggressive in transition,” Auriemma said. “Since she’s been in the starting lineup there has been an incredible change in the look and feel of our team — how aggressive she is on defense, how hard she competes, how difficult she makes it for (opposing) point guards, her tenacity, her grit. And then you throw in that she’s become someone you’re going to have to guard on the 3point line ... She has a little bit of an attitude to her. She has a little bit of an edge. I’ve never seen a great player that didn’t have it. She has it. I love that about her.”
Muhl learned about the 1980s NBA from her father, Darko Muhl. She happened to gravitate to the team that he, along with many others, despised: The Pistons. The Bad Boys.
“I grew up with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley,” Darko said. “The Boston Celtics are my favorite team ever. She was influenced by me. I was always sending her some cool stuff from the old (days). The Detroit Pistons, this was not basketball, in my opinion ... not my type of basketball. Nobody liked them, but they were special. They cheat. They did find their ways to make it happen.
“Nika is feisty. She’s not the player who will score 30 points a game. She’s not the player to have 15 rebounds. She needs to find her place and I think that’s basically why she’s there. Everybody needs to contribute to something. You cannot have 10 players who want to score 20 points.”
Darko, also speaking via Zoom, grabbed the family’s pet, a black and white Maine coon, and wrestled it onto his lap. The cat weighs 11 kilograms. That’s 25 pounds.
“You know what’s funny?” he said excitedly. “The name is Columbo! Like Columbus. It is a cat Nika got for her (eighth) birthday. It’s so funny. I never knew it would happen, (Nika going to) the States and all that.”
Muhl’s decision to pursue an education and a basketball scholarship in America was made a handful of years ago, and her decision to attend UConn was basically solidified as soon as Auriemma stepped into her home in 2019.
“I think Nika was sold immediately,” Darko said. “You know how Geno is. He could talk for hours and every sentence is funny or some legendary stuff. With him, you always know what’s happening. He’s not promising anything. She liked that. He said, ‘Whatever you do, it depends on you,’ and she was sold on that. She was raised like that. Earn everything. Nothing is given.”
Darko, a former basketball player like his wife, Roberta, is a gregarious guy, all sorts of fun for his enthusiasm and conversational style. If the Zoom-toCroatia and Zoom-toStorrs method required to get to know UConn players and their families in a COVID world paints a true enough picture, there are clear similarities between father and daughter.
“Since she was a little kid, she was always bursting with energy with whatever she was doing,” Darko said. “You have to channel it into something, because it was always in a surplus.”
Nika played club basketball for years. Darko, a graphic designer with mostly U.S.-based clients, often worked U.S. hours and took breaks to pick up his daughter from practices that ended at 11 p.m. He’d bring her home and she’d head straight to the street benches with friends, chatting, fooling around.
“I always say (Croatia) is a small country of people with big hearts,” Nika said.
Sweet, right? There’s innocence to this side of her boundless energy. There’s playful mischief, too. Muhl has tried to teach conversational Croatian to teammates.
“They’re mostly familiar with bad words,” she said.
“We have those in abundance,” Darko said, laughing. “Trust me.”
“Nika’s great,” said fellow freshman Aaliyah Edwards, who roomed with Muhl at a Basketball Without Borders camp at the Final Four in 2019. “She’s very funny, charismatic. She’s just a chill person. Definitely a competitor on the court.”
Muhl is an inferno. All business in the sport. All energy, still. Nothing funny about it, though.
It took her awhile to get used to the demands of Auriemma’s program and college basketball in general. Nursing a foot injury early in the season, she missed 13 of 14 shots over UConn’s first five games. At one point, Auriemma stopped a practice to challenge her.
“He said, ‘You’re the worst shooter that UConn has ever seen,’ ” Muhl recalled. “He told me, ‘You’re never going to be a shooter.’ I feel like that was kind of a wakeup call to fight back a little bit and be like, ‘No, you’re not going to say that.’ I let him put pressure on me so I could grow my confidence. … I just had to find that consistency of not (getting) too down or too high, just being kind of in the middle all the time. I feel like I’m closer to it every day.”
Muhl is 18-for-31 from the field in UConn’s past six games.
“Toughness on the court and being aggressive and enthusiastic and playing with a lot of emotion, I feel like that’s what got me here,” Muhl said. “That is my character and I show that on the court. I’m glad that it can be seen, in a way. I feel like the energy helps my team.”
Muhl had a season-high 19 points, 15 in the first quarter alone, Feb. 25 at Creighton. She has started 13 games in a row.
She’s starting because she’s playing well, not the other way around. She earned her spot.
“It’s very rewarding,” Muhl said. “But I don’t think (starting) is what got me going, honestly. Just practice, being on the court a lot and extra work — I feel like that built my confidence. I really wanted to translate the way I practice into games and it took me a while, but I feel like I’ve made progress and there’s still a lot to work on.”
Muhl has never met Rodman.
“I wish,” she said. “He was in Zagreb once, probably before I was born. Maybe he comes again. You never know.”