STORRS — Forward Nik Khamenia left the court limping with an apparent lower body injury during the first half of UConn’s 83-41 win over Wagner on Monday.
Within 15 minutes, Khamenia had ruled out for the remainder of the game, as first reported by David Borges of CT Insider.
Khamenia did not return to the UConn bench after heading into the tunnel with team personnel during a Wagner timeout with 10 minutes to play in the first half.
After the game, Head Coach Dan Hurley said that Khamenia will undergo additional testing on Tuesday. Hurley added that Khamenia will be in a boot for the time being.
Hurley called Khamenia the perfect guy to play for UConn, calling him a mold between former Huskies Alex Karaban and Cam Spencer between his skills and mentality.
“You hope it’s not too much time,” Hurley said. ”You hope it’s a couple weeks or a week or whatever, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for him. For people like him — for other players, it’s different with an injury. For a guy like that, if he misses extended time — weeks, months, whatever it would be — devastation to the person. Like soul ripped out, and not every athlete feels that way when they go down. Some of them, it bothers them a little bit. That guy, it would be devastating for him and obviously it would hurt us.”
Through the first 10 minutes of the contest, the sophomore went 4-of-5 from the field and led the Huskies in scoring with 11 points. Khamenia opened the scoring for UConn with a 3-pointer 23 seconds into the contest, going 3-of-3 from deep. The Duke transfer finished his third regular season game as a Husky third on the team in scoring.
It was shaping up to be a strong bounceback performance for Khamenia after he battled foul trouble in the first half against Michigan on Friday, playing just 22 minutes and finishing that contest with net-zero plus-minus rating.
Fellow forward Colben Landrew replaced Khamenia in the starting lineup to begin the second half, tying for the team-high with 12 second-half minutes. The reigning Big East Freshman of the Week struggled after a strong showing in the first two contests of the season, making just one of his seven field goal attempts.
Freshman Egor Amosov saw his first substantial playing time of the season, entering the contest in the final minute of the first half and tying Landrew with 12 minutes in the second half. Though the 6-foot-8 forward went 0-of-3 on field goal attempts, Hurley said he would be in the mix should Khamenia miss Friday’s contest against Ohio State.
Guard Nils Machowski also saw an uptick in playing time. After averaging six minutes per contest through the first two games of the season, the senior played nearly 18 minutes Monday. The Wofford transfer has gone 1-for-9 from the field and 1-for-7 from three-point range to open the season.
“I just think we’ve been through it obviously in this program,” Hurley said. ”I just look back at last year, we had issues with Tarris [Reed Jr.] throughout the early part of the year. … We’ve experienced time where we had Donovan Clingan miss an extended period of time in 2024. Steph [Castle] missed [an] extended period of time in 2024. We’ve been fortunate. A lot of winning championships is you’re blessed with good luck in terms of health. So, we’ll see what that looks like tomorrow.”