Leader of the pack
Mühl growing into leader for Huskies
The Mühl family often took their daughters to the nearby park in their home city of Zagreb, Croatia.
Parents Darko and Roberta would place their youngest, Hana, in the sandpit and give her a few toys to entertain herself.
Their oldest daughter, Nika, on the other hand, always made park time a game of chase — whether her parents knew it or not.
“As a little child, I would always find something funny and exciting in running away from them,” Nika said Monday. “So when they were not looking, I would just like go off running. I didn’t really know where. I didn’t really know how I was gonna get back, I would just go off running.”
As Nika ran, joyfully giggling and screaming, her parents were always left frantic, chasing her while trying to corral her away from cars.
“She was a handful at a very, very early age,” Darko said. “She wouldn’t sit in one place for 10 seconds. She was just like that basically since she was a little kid. Too much energy.”
All these years later, Nika is still that energetic.
Instead of running away from her parents at parks, she’s weaving in and out of defenders on the court, chasing and diving after every loose ball. Her aggressiveness is shown in her physicality, ripping balls away mid-dribble from opponents and continually sparking her UConn women’s basketball teammates.
Off the court, the 2022 Big East Defensive Player of the Year is still that same genuine kid she was many years ago when she ran through the parks of Zagreb. She’s matured and grown through her first two collegiate seasons on the court, but it’s her priority in the relationships she’s made along the way with the people who support her the most that have made the soon-to-be junior ready for her upperclassman years.
FROM CROATIA TO CONNECTICUT
Darko got his daughters into sports early. Whether it was because sports played such an important role in his life — both he and Roberta are former basketball players — or as a way to find an outlet for
Nika’s endless energy, the activities became important.
Nika tried swimming, triathlon, volleyball, and even spent a week trying out tennis.
Before practices, she’d spend her days playing basketball with boys at a nearby playground. She always thought about basketball and listened to all the stories her parents told her about their careers in the sport.
It wasn’t long before she knew she only wanted to play basketball.
“They wanted me to try other things, but I was pretty stubborn and at the end, I was like, ‘I enjoy playing basketball with boys outside more than I enjoy my volleyball practice in the evening,’ ” Nika said. “So they couldn’t really stop me. Like, that was what I was gonna end up doing.”
It was that stubborn and energetic personality that made her competitive and led to Nika committing to UConn. Coach Geno Auriemma flew to Croatia to recruit the 5-foot-10 guard in person. While she had to learn how to tame her physicality on the court to avoid fouls, she’d find her role as the team’s backup point guard.
Croatia is over 4,000 miles from Connecticut. There’s no direct flight and oftentimes Nika’s travel back home can take up to 22 hours. She spends her cross-Atlantic flights searching the plane for empty seats to lay out and sleep.
She was used to being away from home from growing up playing club basketball throughout Europe, but three days before her first flight to Connecticut ahead of her freshman season she was filled with nerves.
Sure, she’d been away from family and friends for weeks at a time — but never as long as nine months.
“I was crying, I was going crazy,” Nika said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was like, ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here.’ My mom and dad looked at me crazy, like laughing at me. …
“It was definitely a scary thought, and it was scary when I came here. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with it, but I managed to do it and I had a lot of people help me deal with it.”
Nika’s freshmen class included Paige Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards, Piath Gabriel, Mir McLean, and Autumn Chassion. Along with Saylor Poffenbarger — who enrolled early — they made up over half the 12person roster. Quickly the teammates became close friends.
They introduced her to mac-and-cheese and how homemade — specifically McLean’s — is always better than the box version. They tried getting her to share their shoe obsession and even taught her how to not crease a sneaker when walking.
Her teammates were family while hers remained overseas.
“My teammates and the people here, they have been the biggest thing for me,” Nika said. “They really make my days here feel like I’m at home.”
PRIORITIZING HER PEOPLE
Nika cherishes her relationships and likes to be surrounded by close friends and family.
When she goes home to Croatia, Darko jokes that his daughter is hardly home since she’s always out catching up with friends. The Huskies weren’t allowed to travel home for winter break in 2020 due to COVID-19 but this past winter, Nika made the trip even if it meant just twoand-a-half days at home.
“It felt like a month to me, it was great. I did not even sleep, I just went to spend all my time with my friends and family,” she said. “I made the promise to myself, ‘I’m not gonna sleep. I’m gonna use up all the time.’ Maybe that wasn’t the smartest idea coming back here but it was worth it.”
Nika says the crowds and fan bases for her high school teams in Europe were always small. Mostly, just friends and family of the players. The largest crowd she can remember playing in front of before college was around 80 people.
She got goosebumps when she stepped onto the court and heard the crowd cheer during one of her first games as a freshman at UConn. Over 60 games later, she still gets goosebumps every time she steps on the court and hears the cheers during home games.
“I knew I was never going to get used to that,” she says. “I don’t even want to get used to it honestly. I want it to surprise me every time.”
It’s a feeling of support unlike anything she’s experienced before.
It’s why she thoroughly enjoys giving back and engaging with fans of all kinds, from young girls basketball players to longtime season ticket holders. She genuinely wants to show her gratitude for their support.
“That’s her. She likes that interaction. She likes to help. Whatever she can do, she will,” Darko said.
It’s why she responded when a Pennsylvania teenager messaged her on Instagram asking her to help him get Bueckers’ help in asking his girlfriend to prom.
Nika was happy to help especially since she was with Bueckers when she got the boy’s message. While Bueckers at first wanted to put off making the video, Nika convinced her to do it. Little did they know the video would get posted on TikTok and go viral within the week.
“It’s a funny story because I really forced her to do it because she said, ‘I’ll do it later. I don’t look good right now,’ And I was like, ‘You look good. Do it.’ and she did it and it ended up being everywhere,” Nika said before laughing. “We didn’t know it was gonna go viral! I was like, ‘Who cares? Only his girlfriend is gonna see it. It’s fine.’ It ended up being everywhere. It was crazy!”
BECOMING AN UPPERCLASSMAN
Nika is one of four UConn juniors heading into next season — including redshirt junior Aubrey Griffin, who sat out last year with a back injury.
Muhl, who sat out three games last season with a foot injury, has become a leader on the court. She started in 19 of 33 games and is the team’s leading returner in assists (87) and steals (47).
She was surprised when the Big East named her the Defensive Player of the Year , because she’s not playing basketball for the accolades and awards. Her focus is helping her teammates win.
“She’s not flashy. She’s always humble. She’s always like that,” Darko said. “She acts like that and that’s the thing I’m most proud of, that she’s down to earth. That’s her. You’ll never hear her bragging about anything or stuff like that. If awards are there, that’s perfect, but if they’re not, for her it’s not an issue. She will just keep doing her stuff and that’s it.”
Over the past two years, Nika has matured and become more independent while living so far from family, but she’s also learned what it takes to be a leader off the court.
She watched how last year’s seniors Olivia Nelson-Ododa, Christyn Williams and Evina Westbrook led by example, always putting others first and placing the responsibility of the team on themselves.
“They did it all the time,” Nika said. “It was never like, ‘It’s your fault.’ That’s what I love about this place. It’s really, like, it’s all of us. They always used to take responsibility on themselves, especially in front of coaches in practice because when you’re younger you really don’t understand, like you mess up all the time, you need time to catch up on things so it’s good to have older people take responsibility for you.”
Nika flew home to Croatia on Tuesday and will stay for about a month before returning to Storrs for the start of the team’s summer workouts. It’ll be her first time officially in the upperclassmen role and she knows she’s ready to lead.
“I’m looking forward to that responsibility, honestly,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, of course I’m gonna fail and I’m gonna mess up. I’m still just a player like everybody else is but just having in mind that I’m now, I’m the older guy on this team and I need to lead by example is really going to change the way I approach this game.
“I’m looking forward to that. I really think I’m ready to grow up a little bit.”