The WNBA acquired plenty of consideration this yr largely due to rookie sensations Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, but when followers stick round to look at subsequent yr, there’s more likely to be much more expertise hitting the court docket.
The Seattle Storm‘s Nika Muhl could possibly be a type of skills.
Drafted No. 14 total out of UConn, the 6-foot guard hasn’t seen a lot motion in her rookie year. In 16 video games, she’s averaged 3.8 minutes, 0.1 factors and 0.6 rebounds. Muhl scored her first profession bucket in Seattle’s regular-season finale Thursday towards the Phoenix Mercury.
Which may look like the signal of an early bust to some however to Muhl and Seattle, it is all going based on plan.
“Everyone seems at not taking part in as one thing so horrible and so dangerous, however behind the scenes, I am working my butt off,” Muhl told CT Insider’s Maggie Vanoni. “I am not lacking something. I am simply having fun with the method. And that is my journey, and that is the way it’s presupposed to be.”
To be drafted with the second decide within the second spherical, Seattle should have a job for Muhl. She averaged 5.8 factors, 5.2 assists and three.4 rebounds in her time under UConn head coach Geno Auriemma.
Granted, she’s driving a bench behind well-deserving starters like Jewell Loyd, Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins-Smith. However come subsequent season, her teammates suppose she seems primed to contribute at a a lot larger degree.
“Her work ethic has at all times been there,” Loyd advised Vanoni. “She’s one of many hardest staff on this workforce, and other people could not see it, and clearly they need her to be on the court docket, however all of the stuff that she’s doing now’s to getting ready her to return again subsequent season and be nice.”
Veteran guards Sami Whitcomb and Victoria Vivians are both on expiring deals this season and if they don’t return, it might present the chance Muhl has been ready for.
All of the exhausting work and studying would possibly result in extra significant minutes and, due to this fact, extra alternatives to supply on the court docket.
Seattle is the fifth seed on this yr’s WNBA playoffs, dealing with off towards the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces within the first spherical.
Muhl will probably keep on the bench for many of that collection, however she might at all times discover herself tapped within the case of an unlucky harm or the necessity for a change of tempo participant.
