Men’s basketball post-mortem; In a season that rarely went right, Northwestern found something worth holding onto

While the rest of the team had already found themselves back in the locker room, Nick Martinelli stayed behind just a moment longer.

The senior from Glenview, Illinois, who had spent all four years with Northwestern, had just played his final game for the Wildcats. He was caught up with emotion as he stood in the tunnel of United Center on Thursday night. Northwestern head coach Chris Collins was emotional himself in the loss, comforting Martinelli as he rested his head on Collins’ shoulder with tears streaming down his face.

After four months of highs and a lot of lows, Northwestern men’s basketball’s season has come to a close as the exhausted Wildcats — playing their third game in as many days — fell to Purdue, 81-68 in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals. Northwestern finished its year better than how it started with a final record of 15-19 overall, 5-15 in Big Ten play.

On paper, it looked like a step backwards for the program after missing the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year after making it in 2023 and 2024. And in many ways it was. The Wildcats started off conference play with seven straight losses, started 13 different lineups and excruciating loss after excruciating loss, including a 40-point loss to Illinois in January.

But numbers alone don’t tell the entire story for what this team showed us.

Coming off those back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, Northwestern entered 2025-26 with an almost completely new roster with only 32.7% of the Wildcats’ minutes returning from the year prior, a product of the transfer portal era. With three-point shooting and rebounding hard to come by, Collins was forced to try to rebuild the program mid-flight, with younger, less proven pieces being given crucial minutes in a conference that is often unforgiving to young prospects.

But through all the change and noise, Martinelli showed up every night.

The forward had 26 games with at least 20+ points, averaging 23.0 points on the year shooting 51.0% from the field and 41.7% from deep as he reset his own single-season record for most points by a Northwestern player. It’s worth recalling the player he was when he arrived on campus in 2022: a freshman averaging just 2.6 points per game and “probably wasn’t even going to play if it weren’t for injuries.” But he stuck with it, staying with the Wildcats for four years and becoming one of the best players to suit up for the program — a player that Collins had watched grow from a young age.

“Nick went to my basketball camp when he was in fifth, sixth grade,” Collins said. “And just to see his progression, how he’s just gotten better — and not only that, how he’s been able to become a young man.”

In an era that’s increasingly been defined by players looking for a way out via the transfer portal, Martinelli is a part of a rare breed of player that stuck it out. When asked after Thursday’s game what advice he’d give to his younger teammates now facing that same decision, Martinelli was honest about what spending four years in Evanston had given him.

“I don’t condemn anyone for looking at other schools,” Martinelli said. “But for me, I found my place. This is my home. I’ve got so much love reciprocated because I stayed. It’s been such a blessing and an honor.”

Beyond Martinelli’s production, Collins credits the senior’s presence in the locker room — acting as a big brother for a young team going through a tough season.

“I kept thinking back to the guys that were big brothers to him when he was struggling as a freshman,” Collins said. “For him to be that senior leader, especially when it got to a point in our season where we knew the goals we had as a team were probably not going to happen — for him to continue to show up every day, to set the example for our younger players about what it means to be a Northwestern player.”

His example carried the Wildcats into the postseason. Closing the regular season on a 3-2 record and earning the tournament’s No. 15 seed, the team came in ready to make their mark, regardless of seeding. They kicked it off by knocking off Penn State, then upset Indiana — the first time Northwestern has won two Big Ten Tournament games since 2017 — as Martinelli became the program’s all-time leading scorer in tournament play.

On Thursday, the margin ran out. Without big man Arrinten Page, who missed his fourth straight game due to illness, and Tre Singleton, who was dealing with a wrist injury, the Wildcats were outrebounded 35-23 and dug a 24-point halftime hole that proved too much to overcome despite a strong second half with 47 points on 62.1% shooting. It was one of the most complete stretches of basketball the team had played all season long, but much like the season, the effort came too late.

Despite the year not turning out how fans would’ve liked, the No. 1 thing that should be remembered — is that this team never stopped competing.

“We’re not going to tap out,” Collins told them at halftime. “We’re not throwing in the towel. That’s not who we are as a program.”

They weren’t. When it was finally over, Collins said everything that needed to be said about his star in Martinelli.

“I’ll be his biggest fan forever,” Collins said. “I’m just sad I won’t have a chance to coach him anymore.”

The season is over. The tears were honest. And so was everything that came before them.