2025-26 Big Ten basketball season preview: Northwestern Wildcats

Northwestern guard Nick Martinelli attempts a free throw.

With the start of college basketball season in early November, Inside the Hall is taking a team-by-team look at the Big Ten and a player-by-player look at IU basketball’s roster over the next two months.

Today, our team previews continue with Northwestern.

Previously: Penn State, Rutgers, Minnesota

Following consecutive round of 32 NCAA tournament appearances in 2023 and 2024, Northwestern missed the postseason last spring.

Injuries had a lot to do with the Wildcats taking a step backward. Northwestern had Brooks Barnhizer for only 17 games and senior guard Jalen Leach also missed 10 games. Despite those injuries, Chris Collins still managed a 17-16 overall record, seven Big Ten wins and a No. 44 ranking in KenPom by season’s end.

Barnhizer and Leach graduated, but Northwestern returns the league’s leading scorer in senior wing Nick Martinelli. The 6-foot-7 Martinelli averaged 20.5 points last season, becoming the first Northwestern player to lead the conference in scoring since John Shurna back in the 2011-2012 campaign.

Martinelli returns to Evanston after testing the NBA draft waters and is one of the best contested shot makers in all of college basketball. Martinelli can score from all three levels, but excels in the midrange. He also averaged 6.2 rebounds last season.

Breakout candidate K.J. Windham, an Indianapolis native, scored in double figures in six of Northwestern’s final nine games last season. The 6-foot-3 sophomore guard averaged 11.5 points off the bench during that stretch and had 20-point games against Oregon and Iowa.

The likely answer at point guard for Collins is South Florida transfer guard Jayden Reid, a 5-foot-10 junior. Reid averaged 12.6 points, 3.6 assists and 2.6 rebounds while shooting 35.8 percent on 3s last season for the Bulls.

Jeffersonville native and Class 4A state champion Tre Singleton should play a significant role from day one for the Wildcats. An Indiana All-Star and top 100 player nationally in the 2025 class, the 6-foot-8 Singleton chose Northwestern over offers from Clemson, Xavier, Purdue, Louisville and others.

The graduation of Matthew Nicholson, a bruiser in the paint, means the Wildcats will have a much different look at the five in season 13 of the Collins era.

Former four-star recruit Arriten Page, a one-time IU basketball recruit target, is now at his third school in three seasons. Page began his career at USC before transferring to Cincinnati last season. He’s had little success through two seasons and averaged just 3.5 points and 2.3 rebounds in 9.1 minutes per game for the Bearcats. The 6-foot-11 big man could get the first crack at starting.

A trio of returnees, Justin Mullins, Jordan Clayton and Angelo Ciaravino, will give Collins some continuity as he looks to integrate transfers and freshmen.

Mullins, a 6-foot-6 senior, averaged 4.4 points in 22.3 minutes last season, while Clayton played in the final 10 games (all starts) following Leach’s injury after initially planning to redshirt. Those 10 games were valuable experience for the 6-foot-2 Clayton, who averaged 4.7 points, 2.5 assists and 2.4 rebounds in 20.7 minutes.

Ciaravino, a 6-foot-6 sophomore, started seven games last season and had two double-figure games, including 19 points off the bench in a road loss at Purdue in early January.

Holy Cross transfer Max Green, a Kentucky native, will be a wing rotation piece after a highly successful freshman season. The 6-foot-6 Green averaged 14.9 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.5 assists while shooting 38 percent on 3s last season.

Four other freshmen round out the rest of the Northwestern roster.

Jake West, a 6-foot-3 combo guard from Philadelphia, was the No. 159 player in the final 247Sports Composite rankings for 2025. Tyler Kropp, a 6-foot-7 forward from Powell, Ohio, was the No. 193 player in those same rankings. Both could challenge for rotation minutes.

The Wildcats also welcome 6-foot-2 guard Phoenix Gill from St. Ignatius in Chicago and 7-footer Cade Bennerman from Nashville, Tennessee.

Overall, the Northwestern roster is an interesting mix of impact returnees like Martinelli and Windham, promising transfers like Reid, Green and Page and pieces for the future in Singleton, Kropp and three other freshmen.

Collins has continued to prioritize high school recruiting and has the job security to develop players over time, a luxury many coaches do not have in today’s portal landscape. Now a veteran Big Ten coach, Collins has earned his job security by building Northwestern into a respectable Big Ten program and showing loyalty by staying in Evanston.

Bottom line: The Wildcats sit at No. 68 nationally in Bart Torvik’s current projections for the 2025-26 season and were picked to finish 15th in the conference by the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. Northwestern’s ceiling is highly dependent on the play of Reid and Page, a pair of transfers who take over at essential positions. Reid must provide reliable point guard play and Page has to be able to hold his own in the paint, something he’s yet to do through his first two seasons of college.

Quotable: “Northwestern is my family’s home – I am really proud of what we have built over the last 12 years with our basketball program and couldn’t be more excited to continue the journey together.” – Collins last spring after agreeing to a long-term contract extension.

(Photo credit: Northwestern Athletics)

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