Nika will go down as one of the all-time greats for feeding her teammates, leaving her mark on numerous UConn assist records and undoubtedly winning the affection of her teammates, coaches, and UConn women’s basketball fans, regardless of how many assists she totals over her career.
Most games with consecutive double-digit assists (5)
highest career double-digit assist games (16)
Five players have recorded nine games with 13 or more assists; Nika has done it five times, and the other four have done so once apiece.
If Nika keeps up her current pace of assists per game, she will finish the regular season with 621 career assists, good for fifth place.
She might finish in the top three (3rd Jen Rizzotti 637, Diana Taurasi 648) and possibly go close to or overtake Moriah (659) as the all-time career assist leader, depending on how far the team advances in the BE and NCAA playoffs.
Her tenacity, grit, , just really stuck out to me from the beginning, which is why I’ve adored her since her freshman year.
She was Nika the Gnat, the Croatian sensation who drove Geno crazy occasionally and made life miserable for the opposition with her oppressive defense without ever fouling a play. She is prone to making mistakes and bad fouls at the wrong moments.
Paige’s downfall forced Nika to step up, and boy did she ever. With reduced turnovers and blind fouls, along with maturity and leadership, she enjoyed her greatest season to date last year. This season, she has improved her performance even further, playing outstanding defense and developing into a much more formidable offensive threat.
What Geno has frequently cited Nika as saying when he first met her is something I would somewhat modify: “Scoring makes one person happy, making an assist makes two people happy.” In Nika’s case, I believe we can safely add a few thousand Husky fans to that happiness!
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