Biggest questions for Northwestern men’s basketball heading into the summer

A lot of unknowns and a lot to be optimistic about for Chris Collins 2025-26 ‘Cats.

Northwestern men’s basketball enters the 2025-26 season between two eras.

Senior forward Nick Martinelli is the team’s most important player as the reigning Big Ten scoring champ, and he is the only Wildcat with experience on both the 2023 and 2024 tournament teams. The starting lineup behind Martinelli is likely to feature all three transfers and one of either Justin Mullins or KJ Windham — or even true freshman Tre Singleton. Martinelli and Mullins are the only key contributors who are seniors. Behind them, the kid are roaring and ready to go.

Northwestern will not spend a second straight summer gallivanting around the Mediterranean, and therefore there will not be box scores to parse from exhibition matchups against Greek professional teams. From an actual basketball standpoint, Northwestern fans will be left scrutinizing the odd snippet from summer practice that the social media team posts on X.

Holy Cross transfer Max Green strips Nick Martinelli at the 0:16 mark of this clip; is the Patriot League Rookie of the Year already making the jump defensively?! 5’10 USF transfer Jayden Reid, who’s faced concerns about his height since committing to the ‘Cats in April, blocks 6’9 Gus Hurlburt 42 seconds in. No complaints there.

After a spring that saw rumors linking Collins to head coaching vacancies at both Indiana and Villanova, Martinelli putting his name into the 2025 NBA draft and five total roster moves through the portal, fans of Wildcat hoops are in for a bit of a quieter July and August.

Here are the biggest questions for the 2025-26 side entering summer practices:

Who will step up as the second scorer behind Martinelli?

The chain of command heading into last season was similarly unclear. Brooks Barnhizer was the undisputed number one option on paper, but most forget that the situation behind him on offense wasn’t obvious heading into the season opener against Lehigh. Martinelli was a breakout candidate, but No. 2 averaged just 8.8 points per game as a sophomore. Jalen Leach and Ty Berry were both stronger candidates to carry the scoring mantle as Barnhizer missed first few games of the season with a foot injury.

Martinelli is far and away the number one option for this year’s side. Behind him, however, it’s anyone’s guess. Max Green is technically the second-leading returning scorer having averaged 14.9 points per game with Holy Cross as a true freshman, but the level of competition in the Big Ten is different from the Patriot League. Jayden Reid averaged 12.6 as the highest volume shot taker for USF in the AAC.

KJ Windham is the best returning candidate to emerge as the second option, having averaged 10.6 points per game over the final seven games of the season with Leach out for the season. There’s even a path for Justin Mullins to breakout on offense.

How involved will the freshmen be?

Big minutes from KJ Windham and Angelo Ciaravino on Northwestern’s foreign tour last August gave some inclination that Collins saw an immediate role for his two freshmen. There will be a little more guess work this time around.

The only first year Wildcat playing abroad this summer is Tyler Kropp, who will be representing Argentina at the U19 FIBA World Cup in Switzerland. Kropp has consistently put up big numbers for Argentina. He averaged 20.0 points and 7.4 rebounds per game at the U17 FIBA World Cup in 2024, leading Argentina to its best finish in a decade. He went for 22 points and 11 rebounds in his tournament opener against New Zealand on Saturday morning and followed it up a day later with 23 points and 9 rebounds in a win against Serbia.

CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein gave the forward a nice shoutout after the win this morning:

Though the guard rotation is crowded, the lack of big man depth behind Cincinnati transfer Arrinten Page leaves a window for one of the three freshmen forwards to get more playing time. Tre Singleton and Cade Bennerman’s names have come up most often in those conversations, but the 6’9 Kropp will undoubtedly make a case for those minutes as well. Inside NU’s way-too-early depth chart predictions had Singleton and Kropp has the two backup big men behind Page and Maritnelli. Bennerman has a pathway into the lineup, but the 6’10, 200 llbs big may have to put on some pounds before Collins trusts him against the likes of Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg, Oregon’s Nate Bittle and Purdue’s Trey Kauffman-Renn.

What is the impact of Brooks Barnhizer being drafted on recruiting?

This isn’t really a summer question, but definitely one that warrants some conversation two days after Barnhizer became the first Wildcat drafted in the Chris Collins era. Northwestern explicitly prides itself on being a developmental program, and there’s no better testament to the prowess of Collins’ staff in that department than the progression of Captain Brooks. Barnhizer was a three star recruit out of high school who garnered just three other Power Six offers outside of Northwestern.

Purdue is notably absent from the Lafayette, Indiana native’s offer list. Barnhizer played in just 11 games as a true freshman, averaging a modest stat line of 1.7 points, 1.0 assists and 0.7 rebounds. Though he posted 10 points in Northwestern’s 2023 NCAA tournament win over Boise State, his scoring averaging didn’t crack the double-digit mark until his junior season.

On Thursday night, Barnhizer was selected by the reigning champions in the second round of the NBA draft. The only true stain on Collins’ resume as a program builder was his inability get a player drafted in his 13 years in Evanston. He’s sent his fair share of guys to the league — there will likely be four members of the 2022-23 tournament roster in the G-League this fall — but Barnhizer was the first Collins product to hear his name called by Adam Silver. That matters. There is no better walking advertisement to the Northwestern program than No. 13, a four-year Wildcat who crossed both the Northwestern graduation stage and the stage at the NBA Draft this June. The “Best of Both Worlds” pitch has never been stronger.

Collins already has started winning some recruiting battles against the upper echelon of the Big Ten. First year guard Phoenix Gill chose the ‘Cats over Illinois, where his dad Kendall Gill played for four seasons. Four-star Tre Singleton chose Northwestern over Purdue in a hotly contested recruiting battle.

How about the impact of the House settlement?

Northwestern will allocate the majority of its $20.5 salary cap to the football team. Texas Tech, one of the few schools to publicly state its planned revenue sharing allocations, will dish out 74% of its funds to football and 17-18% on men’s basketball. Northwestern will undoubtedly follow a similar model, but the margins here matter. The difference between a 77-16 and a 75-18 split between football and men’s basketball is more than $400,000. That’s the difference between signing and not signing one of the top names in the portal next summer, or retaining and not retaining a guy like KJ Windham after a breakout season.

As I wrote in my biggest questions for football piece last week, TrueNU will still have the ability to supplement earnings by facilitating third-party NIL deals, but that revenue sharing money remains a massive question mark.

From a recruiting standpoint, Northwestern is already attached to some big names in the class of 2026. The ‘Cats have already locked in official visits from two highly touted four-star propsects in Jasiah Jervis and Jayden Hodge. Jervis, a 6’5 small forward from White Plains, NY (something about Northwestern guards from New York…), told 247Sports’ Sam Lance, “I take pride in my grades. My parents always say schoolwork first, basketball after. Same thing. They let their guards play. They trust their guards to do whatever it takes to help them win and they’re a winning program. The Big Ten is one of the best conferences I would say.” Hodge, another small forward, is 247Sports’ No. 42 ranked prospect in his class and would be far and away the highest ranked recruit to ever sign with the ‘Cats. Tre Singleton, who currently holds that mantle, was ranked No. 89.

I would be curious if Collins’ recently inked extension is playing a role in Northwestern’s apparent early success on the recruiting trail. The coaching carousel rumors may have given him some real leverage in those negotiations that he could have parlayed into a jacked-up NIL budget. Northwestern entered last season without a true point guard on the roster in part because the ‘Cats couldn’t match Miami’s NIL offer to Stetson guard Jalen Blackmon in the portal. This offseason, Northwestern did struggle to fill its open spot at center through the portal, but the ‘Cats did beat out the likes of Florida, Florida State, St. John’s and Illinois with a pitch that undoubtedly included a competitive NIL package.

Changing scholarship limits are another House-induced question that Northwestern will have to answer. House increased the number of allocated scholarships for men’s basketball from 13 to 15, but crucially, any new scholarships added would count against the $20.5 million cap. I’d say it’s extremely unlikely that Northwestern eats the $180,000 hit to give Gus Hurlburt and Blake Smith full rides heading into their senior seasons.

I am much less certain about the future. Assuming nobody transfers out, Northwestern will have four new scholarships to give to recruits and transfers before the 2026-27 season after Hurlburt, Smith, Martinelli and Mullins graduate. My best guess here is that Collins will use them for his recruiting class of 2026 if he finds himself in a similar situation to last year where he lands more commitments than he was expecting. However, that scenario puts Northwestern in the awkward position where it’s deciding whether to spend somewhere between $100,000-$200,000 (that’s another guess — I’m assuming schools will use House as a sort of ‘signing bonus’ for new recruits) on the 14th scholarship for men’s basketball or to shore up David Braun’s secondary.

I also don’t know if using that 14th scholarship spot only would count against the cap for this year or in all future years under House. Would Northwestern lose the $100,000 each year it allocates the additional 14th scholarship, or just in the first year it exceeds the limit? The House salary cap increases each year as well, but so does the cost of a Northwestern tuition.

The one thing we do know? There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Northwestern basketball, regardless of how many scholarships the athletic department decides to divvy out. Chris Collins will be the coach for the foreseeable future, Nick Martinelli is back for year four and he is joined by five freshmen making up the best recruiting class in Northwestern history. I’d hop on the bandwagon while there’s still time.