Let’s get this out of the way: Northwestern’s season has been an unmitigated disaster.
Coming into the year with eight fresh faces to surround the Big Ten’s reigning scoring champion in senior forward Nick Martinelli, the Wildcats (8-8, 0-5 Big Ten) have underperformed just about every feasible expectation. Having suffered five of its eight defeats by margins of five points or fewer, NU has acquired an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
And, with six matchups against top-15 opponents still looming on the ’Cats’ schedule, a change in fortunes appears highly unlikely.
With a campaign as “tragic” as NU’s thus far, as Martinelli has repeatedly dubbed it, it is only natural for criticism to turn toward the coach. After the ’Cats slumped to 0-5 in Big Ten play with a 77-75 overtime road defeat to Rutgers in which they led for all but two minutes of regulation time, fan sentiment appeared to turn further against coach Chris Collins’ management of his squad.
On X postgame, fans boiled over with frustration at Collins’ rotations. Some questioned why junior center Arrinten Page, the team’s second-leading scorer and only true rim protector, played just 16 regulation minutes. Others continued to ring the alarm bell on the continued absence of sophomore guard K.J. Windham, who reappeared on the court after three consecutive DNPs but played just four minutes.
On the extreme end, one account spammed the replies of several posts about the Rutgers game with, “COLLINS! NEEDS! TO! GO!! This is lineup malpractice. More talent than we have had in years and he keeps wasting it with stubborn, indefensible decisions.”
There is plenty of merit to the criticism directed at Collins this season.
His critics’ case is most damningly made by the KenPom “luck” rating, which measures the difference between a team’s actual record and how a mathematical model would expect it to perform based on underlying metrics. Of 365 teams in Division I men’s basketball, NU sits dead last.
While a team with truly incapable personnel might find itself repeatedly blown out of the water by superior programs, losing games time and time again through poor execution in the final minutes suggests some level of coaching error.
Collins’ scrambled rotations haven’t helped either. Having succeeded over the past three years with a shallow cast of roughly eight players, Collins’ inexperience with handling the depth of a 10- or even 11-man rotation has become apparent. And, even if his reasons for freezing Windham out are legitimate, he risks losing a massive talent to the transfer portal if he allows the sharpshooting guard to rot on the bench any longer.
Yet, even in the midst of a season in turmoil, it is easy to overlook that the standard Collins has set for himself is nothing short of wizardry.
Taking over a program 13 years ago that had never made an NCAA Tournament in its history, Collins has led the ’Cats to three. In former guard Boo Buie, he developed a player with no other Power Five offers into the program’s all-time leading scorer. In Martinelli, he cultivated a talent who was previously committed to play mid-major basketball at Elon into the nation’s current leading scorer.
Any suggestion that five bad games should undo the miracles Collins has worked at NU or cast doubt on his ability to lead the program forward is preposterous.
This season’s struggles can be easily explained by poor roster construction that has left the squad badly short of reliable defensive personnel. Replacing three outstanding two-way players in guard Brooks Barnhizer, guard Ty Berry and center Matthew Nicholson with portal acquisitions who thrive primarily on offense has led to a string of subpar defensive showings.
Collins can take his fair share of blame for the composition of this year’s squad. But, with NU starting at a disadvantage relative to the rest of the Big Ten in terms of name brand and resources, it is unrealistic to expect every recruit and portal acquisition to hit.
It is also easy to forget the long and difficult development trajectories of the players that spearheaded Collins’ renewal as a coach with two consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
Buie may have left Evanston as a program great, but NU fans weathered three years of up-and-down play before Agent Zero became an all-conference-caliber player. Evaluating the team after Buie’s sophomore year, one Daily reporter wrote in 2021, “Go find a grad transfer point guard. When Boo Buie’s great, he’s great. But in his two seasons at NU, he’s been streaky and inconsistent.”
Former guard Chase Audige similarly took time to find his footing, with the same Daily reporter writing before his junior season, “He was capable of being the best player on the floor, but on other nights he got careless and in foul trouble. He’s not a consistent scorer — he’ll get you 15 points one night and then four the next.”
By their senior years, Buie and Audige formed one of the best backcourt duos in the conference. Such is the natural arc of player development. But, if Collins’ naysayers had their way, he wouldn’t have even been in charge of stewarding the ’Cats to consecutive March Madness appearances.
When then-Athletic Director Derrick Gragg issued his infamous ultimatum tasking Collins with “making necessary changes” ahead of the 2022-23 season, the Wildcat coach’s tenure was on life support. Imagine if Gragg had pulled the plug.
The ’Cats currently stand as a young team that has the capacity to return all but two of their scholarship players. The next 15 games are a massive opportunity for NU’s all-time-best recruiting class to improve, and for Collins and his talented yet inexperienced core to convince each other that it is worth sticking together in the coming years.
Collins’ track record as a talent maximizer is no guarantee that he will be able to perform similar developmental feats with this crop of players.
But, if there’s one man capable of turning these miserable last few weeks into the origin story of a great team, it’s Chris Collins.
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