It was unbelievable to me that Nika only played 6 minutes yesterday and no I don't want to see Nika out there instead of Paige, I want to see her with Paige more. Geno said she wasn't out there because he wanted offense. Evina played 18 minutes with no scoring, Nika played 6 minutes and hit the three that put us ahead. In my opinion she is a better ball handler under pressure than Evina, a better pressure defender and better at getting the offense going quicker. If Evina was as effective offensively as she has been of late, stay with her, but that wasn't the case so why not split those 24 minutes evenly between Nika and Evina and see what Nika was able to do for the team with that additional 6 minutes. I heard the argument about the two quick fouls, clearly not great choices by Nika but she wasn't the only Husky making bad choices ( fouls or turnovers). Also it should be noted that UCF did not score on either of those fouls.
Her energy and intensity triggered us to take the lead in the second, besides hitting the three she should have had two assists as well, one after a great steal and pass to Caroline who missed the easy layup and the second, a great feed to Olivia who was called for a 3 sec violation. If Nika was on the floor six more minutes ( getting six of Evina's minutes) does anyone seriously think she wouldn't have had additional positive impact. BTW Geno in his presser indicated that he expected Nika to play a bigger role going forward, in this particular game he sat her in hopes of getting more offense ( which as I would argue above didn't happen).