2025-26 season: One to learn from in Wildcat basketball

It was a difficult season to be a Northwestern basketball aficionado.

Every season, Wildcat fans go in hoping for the best: intentional additions from the transfer portal, rejuvenated on-the-court plays and, most importantly, a growth in tactics used to stand out in a competitive Big Ten conference. Whether both teams accomplished these points this season or not, the actions (and stats) speak for themselves.

To place things into perspective: for the first time in four years, men’s basketball finished with a losing season (15-19, 5-15 B1G), while women’s basketball failed to win a double-digit number of games (8-21, 2-16 B1G) for the fourth consecutive year.

Men’s basketball still made the 2026 Big Ten Tournament — which, by the way, had all 18 teams automatically participating for the first time — but that does not hide everything else that went wrong for the team. As for women’s basketball, it is transition time, as the team welcomes a new coach and continues to go in search of its playing identity.

The turnover effect

The saying goes, “it is not how you start, it is how you finish.”

Both teams started the season with a good form and hopeful consecutive wins, until they started to derail from a consistent performance level.

Men’s basketball had gone on a five-game winning streak between the end of October and mid-November, counting one of the exhibition games. Their season-high win was against Cleveland State on Nov. 10, scoring 110 points. After that spark of joy, the team never managed to get past two-game winning streaks. It wasn’t until a pair of games played between Feb. 18 and Feb. 28 that they managed to produce a singular three-game winning streak. To reference a common theme in many of these results, men’s basketball lost 12 games with a margin of 10 points or less, with seven of those coming down to the wire and lost by five points or less.

The Big Ten Tournament was more representative of the Wildcats’ potential, showcasing glints of the team mindset that used to characterize the program. Going in seeded No. 15, the Wildcats earned their first two conference tournament wins since 2017. In wins against No. 18-seed Penn State and No. 10-seed Indiana, they leaned on a more-than-needed competitive rhythm. However, in their third game, the Wildcats could not keep up with No. 7-seed Purdue, who went on to win this year’s edition of the Big Ten Tournament.

To place things into perspective again: men’s basketball made a lot more progress in the three tournament games played than in the unstable record they kept during the regular season. Something to make note of during the offseason.

Moving on to women’s basketball, the team gave us reasons to believe a reconstruction was possible at the beginning of the season. They went on a seven-game winning streak, not losing their first until Nov. 29 against Missouri. A 10-game losing streak would replace that streak, followed by an 11-game losing streak. Yes, things got ugly for the Wildcats, who never really found a fix in team tactics. Their season-high win was the exhibition game against Lewis on Nov. 1, where they scored 82 points. Aside from that, their best regular-season performance was against DePaul on Nov. 17, in a 79-point victory.

Women’s basketball was eliminated from Big Ten Tournament contention with a game in hand, after losing to Maryland on Feb. 25. For the women’s tournament, only 15 out of 18 teams qualified — women’s basketball finished 17th in the standings. In a conference that raises its competitiveness season after season, this was reflected in how much the Wildcats were able to keep up with such a profile. Considering they only managed to win two conference games, against Rutgers and Wisconsin, this was something both teams struggled with across the board.

Team vs. Individual

We will always encounter athletic programs with a doubtful roster, but there will always be a player who stands out amongst them all. In Northwestern’s case, both teams could have kept drifting from an NCAA Tournament participation or from the ability to create upset wins against ranked teams, but men’s basketball fourth-year forward Nick Martinelli and women’s basketball fourth-year forward Grace Sullivan continued to make the difference.

The Wildcats might have finished unranked as a collective, but Martinelli and Sullivan managed to shine on their own at the conference and national level.

As a third-year player last season, Martinelli stepped up as an unsung hero for the team. Now, as a fourth year, he continued to demonstrate his on-court and off-court leadership, especially as one of the few upperclassmen starters head coach Chris Collins consistently counted on. After breaking the program’s single-season points record in the 2024-25 season, totaling 676 points, he responded by surpassing said record this season, racking up 759 points.

At the conference level, Martinelli ranked first for most points scored per game, averaging 23. In the NCAA landscape, he continued to exceed expectations. Not only did he rank seventh in scoring, but he also stood as the only Big Ten player named in the first 10 spots. For a second consecutive year, he was named in the All-Big Ten Second Team, voted by coaches and the media. One can continue to make an argument for why Martinelli should have been in the First Team conversation, but one thing is certain: the everlasting impact his playing ability and character will have on the Wildcats beyond his Northwestern jersey days.

On the women’s side, Sullivan might have only been at Northwestern for two seasons, but her standout performance prevailed until her final game. This season, she was the team’s leading scorer with a noticeable difference, scoring 599 points; second-year forward Tayla Thomas was second in line with 280 points. In the conference as a whole, Sullivan finished fourth in points per game, averaging 21.4 points. This earned her a spot in the All-Big Ten Third Team, voted by coaches, and the All-Big Ten Second Team, voted by the media. For a team that struggled to secure more than eight victories, Sullivan won for her ability to continue resembling a well-rounded player.

They will be missed

With the end of the season came the end of an era.

On the surface, Martinelli left Northwestern with 1,787 points under his name. Beyond that, his great impact as a leader, with a versatile profile and a scoring prowess, is what we will mostly remember. His next destination? Most likely, a seat at the upcoming 2026 NBA Draft, where we’ll wait to see where a well-deserved draft pick lands him.

In the coaching sense, after 16 seasons with the Wildcats, women’s basketball head coach Joe McKeown placed a cap on his coaching career. Despite recent misfortune, his overall historic run will be characterized by the growth it brought to Northwestern women’s sports. The Wildcats’ 2019-20 season will continue to serve as a memorable example of the team’s success, winning the Big Ten regular season championship and the most season wins in program history (26) under McKeown’s helm. The values he instilled throughout the years, from persistence to community building, never went unnoticed.

Next stop? Filling the void

The offseason always leaves questions for the future, and this one is no exception.

For men’s basketball, all questions lie in who will be the Wildcats’ new leader and co. Martinelli’s departure isn’t the only position Northwestern will have to fill. Fourth-year guards Justin Mullins and Blake Smith also depart, with Smith still having a year of eligibility. In more worrying news, a list of players who have entered the transfer portal has been expanding, including names one would have expected to grow with the program in the upcoming season: second-year guard K.J. Windham, first-year forward Tre Singleton, third-year forward Arrinten Page, third-year guard Jordan Clayton, third-year guard Jayden Reid and first-year forward Tyler Kropp. Coach Collins will now look towards those transitioning into upperclassmen roles — and who remain on the team — including transfer portal acquisitions, for what will look like a completely refreshed roster.

For women’s basketball, Carla Berube will help to write a new chapter after the team announced her as the new head coach. With 26 years of coaching experience, the former Princeton head coach compiled an .835 winning record with the Tigers in the span of seven years, leading the team to five NCAA Tournament participations. Within her own playing years, she won NCAA silverware with the UConn Huskies. She will bring in a fusion of on-the-court experience and coaching expertise to a team in continuous adaptation, looking to embed fruitful results by next fall.