Cleveland — In case there was any doubt what Nika Muhl felt like after she fouled out just 31 seconds into the fourth quarter of UConn’s 82-67 loss to Notre Dame on Jan. 27, she put it out there Thursday at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.

“It definitely did kill, that Notre Dame,” Muhl said. “It did. After that game, I needed like three weeks to get back to my old self, probably. It felt like, honestly, somebody ripped a piece of my soul out of me.

“But that’s what it’s supposed to feel because when you’re passionate about the game, when you love it and when you disappoint your team, that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

Muhl was speaking on the eve of UConn’s Final Four matchup against Iowa in the national semifinals at 9:30 p.m. Friday in Cleveland.

Muhl, a 5-foot-11 senior guard who announced she will leave after this season, not using her extra year of eligibility, said it was that game against Notre Dame, crushing as it was, that has perhaps allowed her to be here this weekend.

Muhl guarded Southern Californina freshman phenom JuJu Watkins in the regional final in Portland, Oregon, on Monday. She picked up her fourth foul with 3:05 still to play in the third quarter against USC and never came out of the game, charging forward with her defensive assignment. The fifth foul never came.

Next up to test Muhl’s defensive pride will be Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the nation’s leading scorer with 32.0 points per game. Watkins is the second leading scorer with 27.1 per game and Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair, who the Huskies faced in the second round of the NCAA tournament, is eighth with 22.2.

No matter what happens with Clark, who is a unique talent, thinking nothing of firing for 3-pointers from the logo — Clark, the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, averages 22.7 shots per game — Muhl can leave UConn as a proud defender.

She is the two-time Big East Conference defensive player of the year, although not this year despite guarding some of the game’s biggest luminaries.

“Yeah, um, I told myself that I'm not going to foul out this game,” Muhl said of her matchup with Watkins, with teammate Paige Bueckers switching off with Muhl to give her a break occasionally. “But I didn't say that I'm not going to get four fouls, so ...

“Coach in free rounds was on me a lot (Monday) about fouling. I kind of took that personal. I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to do that to my team and to myself again.’”

In UConn’s shootaround prior to the USC game, Muhl was foul-prone, UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. He said: “I lost my mind.”

“She goes, ‘I won’t do that tonight,’” Auriemma said. “I said, ‘Yes, you will. I’ve seen it over four years, over 9,700 games. Of course you’re going to do it tonight. ... I think for the first time there was a point where she was scared. Like, ‘I can’t screw around anymore.’ She learned her lesson from the Notre Dame game.”

Muhl is from Zagreb, Croatia. She’s averaging 6.8 points, 4.0 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 1.2 steals per game in a season in which she became the Huskies’ all-time assists leader with 679 entering Friday’s game.

She was an All-Big East second team all-star, a member of the Big East all-tournament team and an Associated Press honorable mention selection.

UConn’s Bueckers called Muhl “the calming presence on our team,” to which Auriemma, sitting next to her on the interview podium, jokingly snapped his neck to glare at Bueckers. To be an inspiration, perhaps, is to be calming.

Said Bueckers: “She’s just everything we need as a leader. She says everything she needs to say in huddles and she controls what we do on defense. Always takes the toughest assignment and doesn’t care about the credit.”

The fouls are the European style of play to which Muhl was accustomed before arriving at UConn. She will graduate after playing in her third Final Four.

“I feel like, I don’t know, I was just extremely, extremely happy and proud and I mean, I feel like we played our butts off that game and we played 100% and I was dead after,” Muhl said of the triumph over USC. “I was ready to go to bed immediately right there on the court.

“(Defense) is an enormous amount of pride. I’ve always loved defense more than offense ... it’s who I am as a person, it’s my character and having that assignment, I take a lot of pride in it. I take it very personal.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com