How Nika Mühl escaped the doghouse to become a UConn legend

It’s Jan. 19, 2021. Inside Gampel Pavilion, UConn is in the process of demolishing Butler. The Bulldogs aren’t the only ones getting blasted, though.

Nika Mühl sits on the bench struggling to hold back tears as Geno Auriemma rips into her. He wags his fingers as the words spill out with fury while Mühl just looks straight ahead and nods.

It’s been a tumultuous start to the point guard’s career. She missed her first 12 shot attempts — none of which came particularly close to the basket. Through four games, she piled up eight turnovers to just seven assists.

That’s not what’s drawn Auriemma’s ire, though. The two have butted heads from the moment she stepped on campus and the coach has finally had enough. In UConn’s next game against Tennessee, Mühl doesn’t even see the floor.

At the time, her absence doesn’t draw much attention. Nearly all the focus is on another freshman in the Huskies’ thrilling win over their former arch-rival: Paige Bueckers, who hit a game-sealing 3-pointer as the shot clock expired in the final minute despite leaving the game earlier that quarter with an ankle injury.

Mühl is an afterthought in that moment. UConn didn’t need her to secure the win.

By the time her career ended, Mühl couldn’t have been more valuable. Over four years, she developed from a role player that landed herself firmly in Auriemma’s doghouse into one of the most important pieces on a Final Four squad.

Now, she’s off to the WNBA as the 14th overall pick to the Seattle Storm. Mühl leaves Storrs as the program’s leader in single-game, single-season, and all-time assists — not to mention her status as a cult hero among the fanbase.

All that traces back to the tongue-lashing delivered by Auriemma during her freshman year and his decision not to play her against Tennessee.

“It always takes me to that Tennessee game my freshman year when Coach didn't even play me,” Mühl said at the end of the regular season. “When I think about how many games I've played and how many minutes I've played, or how many games I've started, it always takes me back to that game and what I learned in that game.”

Despite how it looked — with the yelling and the tears — Mühl revealed that Auriemma’s message during that infamous moment from her freshman year was much softer than it appeared on the outside.

“I'll never ever forget that,” she said. “He didn't even reassure me. It wasn't even like he was getting on me. It was just like a moment of like, ‘I'm here for you. It's okay. It happens. You're growing. You're a freshman. Allow yourself to do those things. I'm just trying to motivate you.’”

That — along with the ensuing benching against Tennessee — proved to be a turning point in Mühl’s career. She couldn’t be so headstrong if she wanted to make it at UConn. She had to listen to Auriemma instead of trying to do everything her own way.

“In that moment, I realized that every time he yells at me every time, he says something that I don't want to hear, it's because he loves me so much,” Mühl said. “He wants to trust me, he wants me to get better.”

“Nobody can help you until you realize it yourself.”

That epiphany provided the jump start she needed. Mühl got her first career start in place of the injured Bueckers just two days after the win at Tennessee and became a regular in the starting lineup three games later. She quickly established herself as a crucial piece for the Huskies and helped them turn the season around after an embarrassing loss to Arkansas.

“When we inserted her into the starting lineup last year, that’s when the team changed and there’s a reason for that,” Auriemma said during the 2021-22 season. “What she brings is unique and she’s the one player on our team who has it.”

Mühl’s freshman season ended on a down note when she suffered an ankle injury in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and missed the next three games. She returned for the Final Four but was clearly still hobbled in the loss to Arizona.

As a sophomore, Mühl again started slow — in part due to lingering issues from that injury in the NCAA Tournament — and didn’t get her first start until after the new year. But once she returned to the starting lineup, UConn broke out of another slow start and quickly found its groove.

Still, Mühl wasn’t indispensable yet. In the second round, Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, she played a combined 24 minutes. Auriemma didn’t even use her in either overtime period of the regional final win over NC State.

That was about to change dramatically.

As UConn entered the 2022-23 season, it featured a loaded, but thin, backcourt. And if all went according to plan, Mühl would probably be at the bottom of the depth chart.

Bueckers was a bonafide superstar, while both Azzi Fudd and Caroline Ducharme were former highly-touted recruits coming off freshmen seasons where they each had shown flashes of dominance. Fairfield transfer Lou Lopez Sénéchal impressed immediately with her day-to-day consistency as well as her ability to score from all over the floor as well.

Mühl’s energy, leadership, and defense would get her minutes, but it seemed unlikely she’d be more than a role player — similar to her first two seasons.

Then the injuries struck. Bueckers tore her ACL over the summer and missed the entire year. Fudd, who was expected to help with ball-handling duties, went down with a knee injury seven games into the campaign and missed almost the rest of the regular season. Ducharme struggled with issues stemming from a head injury she picked up as a freshman and once she started to get going, she suffered a concussion and missed 13 games.

Suddenly, Mühl found herself as the lone ball-handler left. There were multiple games where she and Lopez Sénéchal were the only guards on the floor.

Mühl got thrown into the fire — and she thrived. In UConn’s third game of the season, she set the program’s single-game assist record with 15 vs. NC State and followed it up by hitting double-digits in the category over the next three games.

By the end of that season, Mühl had piled up a program-record 284 assists — 53 more than Sue Bird’s previous mark, which had stood for over two decades. Only 40 assists separated second and 10th place on that list.

Her value also skyrocketed. Mühl went down with a concussion in the second half against Princeton and UConn barely eked out a win after struggling against a full-court press. Mühl sat out the next game and the Huskies turned the ball over 22 times in a loss at Maryland.

By the end of the season, an internal study by the team discovered that Mühl played the equivalent of 10+ more games compared to opposing guards based on her total number of minutes. UConn learned it couldn’t afford to have her on the bench for any extended period.

Even though Bueckers returned and the Huskies added point guard KK Arnold as a freshman ahead of this past season, Mühl remained as important as ever. That much was obvious when she got into foul trouble in a loss to Notre Dame — when she was on the floor, they out-scored the visitors by 13 in a game they lost by 15.

The assists numbers also remained high. Mühl again passed Bird’s former record to become the only player in program history with 200+ assists in multiple seasons. In the second round of the NCAA Tournament, she dished out her 660th career assist — the most in UConn history.

Mühl has come a long way from crying on the bench, too stubborn to get out of her way as a freshman. Now, she’s the greatest passer to come through the greatest program in college basketball.

“Pretty hard to imagine when she first got here she would ever be in that conversation,” Auriemma said.

“Nobody expected me to do it when I came here,” Mühl said. “I surely didn't expect myself to do it.”

Mühl has established herself as one of the greatest players in UConn history. She wasn’t an All-American and won’t end up in the Huskies of Honor, but that’s fitting for someone whose impact could never be properly quantified. Her biggest contributions were always the ones that never showed up on a stat sheet.

Still, it’s not like Mühl didn’t make her mark. In addition to all the passing records, she was a two-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year, a two-time All-Big East Second Team pick, and earned AP All-American honorable mention nods in her final two seasons.

On top of the hardware, Mühl played her best basketball down the final stretch of her career. She defended the likes of Dyaisha Fair, JuJu Watkins, and Caitlin Clark during the NCAA Tournament and held them all to bad nights. In the Elite Eight, Mühl went the final 13 minutes without committing a fifth foul and helped get UConn to the Final Four. She did all she could in her final collegiate game, hitting a 3-pointer with 41 seconds left to pull the Huskies within one against Iowa.

Above all else, Mühl’s journey has been remarkable. She came to Storrs from Croatia in a loaded freshman class that featured three top-25 recruits and endured arguably the toughest four-year stretch in program history with the Covid campaign followed by three injury-plagued seasons.

In her climb up the record books, Mühl passed the likes of Bird, Renee Montgomery, Jennifer Rizzotti, Diana Taurasi, and Moriah Jefferson. Those greats likely had two All-Americans on the floor at all times throughout her career. Mühl played with just two All-Americans total.

“What makes it even more amazing is that other groups that you just mentioned, how many Olympians were they passing the ball to every possession? Half the Olympic team,” Auriemma said. “So it's pretty easy to get 200 assists when every time the ball leaves your hand, it’s going to an Olympian. For Nika to not necessarily have had that opportunity, I think it's quite remarkable.”

Mühl is certainly far down the list of the most talented players to come through Storrs, she’s not the most athletic. Yet few players had more heart and played with more passion than Mühl. Throughout her four years, we saw the entire spectrum.

Auriemma built the program into what it is by pushing players out of their comfort zones to make them great. Nobody embodies that better than Mühl — tears and all.