When Bueckers went down there was panic over the thought of UConn having to rely on Muhl.
I don’t think this is quite accurate. At least it’s not how I remember it. There was indeed panic over the thought of not having Paige. It wasn’t specifically focused on Nika or anyone else.
Last summer at this point very few posters were putting Muhl into the starting lineup.
I think this is right. Very few of us had even considered Nika as a possible starter. I know I didn’t and I was a cautious Nika supporter at that time. I was focused on the need for her to improve her offense in order to open up passing lanes.
What we had before our eyes was the prospect of a healthy Paige Azzi Caroline, some concern about which Aaliyah would show up in November, and would Aubrey be her old self, and how well Dorka would play after her scary injury. Nika was barely on the radar for most of us, though Geno kept talking about how important she would be even in that lineup. We quibbled a lot about Nika’s stats and the changes we hoped she’d make in her offense.
And then destiny knocked on the door. Paige went down, Caroline had trouble getting healthy, Ice went down, Dorka broke her thumb, and we learned that Ayanna was legally blind in one eye. This was a lot to digest.
Geno had helped us out by singing the praises of healthy Azzi and how she was ready to be “the best player in the country every game.” And the Texas NC St and Iowa games hammered that point home:
she really could be the NPOY. And Aubrey was playing even better than she ever had.
And even more stunning (and bewildering) than all of this was Nika. She really hit the ground running. Under her leadership, we practically ran Texas and NC St off the floor at the beginning of those games. Azzi torched both of them for 32 pts. But there was no denying that Nika was the tutelary demon of the huskies.
No one saw that coming. And then we got used to it. She did it with defense (of course) and with assists, and she also started scoring. She took more shots, she finished at the rim, and she found her way to the foul line where she made her free throws. This was all new… and wonderful.
So, yes, no one expected Nika to start last summer because we had no idea what sort of offensive player she’d be. Now we’re all arguing about whether she’ll start. But I’m pretty sure everyone on the BY agrees that she’ll pick up more or less where she left off last season, whether she starts or not. She’ll be a decent, keep-the-defense-honest scorer who pushes the offense hard, who gets a lot of assists, finishes at the rim, shoots 35% from 3, makes her free throws, gets steals and rebounds and doesn’t foul out. She is a known quantity.
The other thing I remember from last season, before all the injuries happened, was our tentative confidence that we could run the table against all the old rivals. With Paige Azzi and Caroline playing as expected we all felt that our backcourt would overmatch any other team. There was some handwringing about how our frontcourt would matchup against SC and Stanford. Aaliyah and Dorka were unknown quantities. So was Aubrey. We were hopeful Ice would play as advertised and tantalized by the prospect of Ayanna outmuscling opponents and dunking with two hands. And Lou (an unknown quantity if ever there was one) might get a few minutes a game, though many of us doubted she’d even be able to get a shot off. The name Inês hadn’t even been uttered in our presence yet.
In this context, we barely had any attention left to worry about how much Nika would play. And in the event, we played like champions against the top teams, even with a depleted lineup. Other coaches schemed to neutralize Nika. We were exhausted at times and floundered against weaker teams. But there was one constant: Nika, who never let us down.