As the number of games left for this year’s Northwestern squad dwindles, the big question is who will take the torch from senior forward Nick Martinelli and lead the Wildcats next season.
The emerging answer: a backcourt made up of a freshman and a 5-foot-10 mid-major transfer.
Wednesday’s close battle versus No. 2 Michigan marked the third game in a row that Collins elected to start freshman guard Jake West and junior transfer Jayden Reid together.
Across West and Reid’s combined 23.5 minutes together on the floor, Northwestern’s lineups averaged an impressive 2.00 points per minute, a 3.33 assist-to-turnover ratio and 1.07 points per possession.
“Jayden and Jake really like playing together,” Collins said. “They have good energy and it allows us to have a little bit more ball-handling and playmaking on the floor. We give up a little bit of size but I think it’s enabled those guys to kind of play off each other.”
Reid’s off-ball role allowed him to shoot a perfect five-for-five from the field in the first half versus the Wolverines and eventually finish with a game-high 20 points.
The talent of the Westbury, New York native wasn’t lost on Michigan coach Dusty May who recalled attempting to recruit Reid to Florida Atlantic, when May was head coach there, before he committed to South Florida. May recalled how he received a call that urged May to look past his height because Reid is a “winner” and “he’ll run your team.”
“Jayden Reid had a performance, he looked lightning quick and got to his spots,” May said postgame. “I have a lot of respect for him.”
While it was Reid who stole the limelight tonight, it was his freshman running mate who turned heads Sunday with a career-high 18 points on 7-for-8 shooting from the field against Iowa.
The stellar night from West led to Collins comparing his important role as a freshman to that of two Wildcat legends: Bryant McIntosh and Boo Buie.
“Jake was a huge scorer in high school,” Collins said in Iowa City postgame. “He was a guy that scored 25 plus a game, that’s always been his MO, being able to put the ball in the basket.”
Scoring from both West and Reid couldn’t have come at a better time, as Big Ten leading scorer Nick Martinelli has fallen on hard times.
While Martinelli’s 21 and 18 points versus Iowa and Michigan, respectively, looks elite, the stat is misleading. Martinelli has shot a measly 11-for-41 from the field across these last two games, a far cry from his season average of 50.5% FG.
Even if these past few games can be written off as flukes, there is no discrediting how central Martinelli is to this team. The senior’s 370 field goal attempts is 154 more than Reid’s 216, the next closest player on the team, and comes only one year after Martinelli set the school record with 533.
Collins has not been shy about how large of a role Martinelli plays in the offense’s scheme, but come next November, the team will need to find a new way to operate.
Only 25 games into their NU careers, West and Reid have begun to gel with one another and shape up nicely to fill a Martinelli-sized hole together next season.
For now, the chemistry between the ’Cats frontcourt duo will only continue to build as the season winds down. Reid said postgame that playing with West “takes pressure” off him and that “it’s just fun being out there with Jake.”
“In the summer, it was just me and him competing, but as the season went on, they started trusting us to play together,” Reid said. “We can both defend point guards and shooting guards, so just having us both out there, it brings a different dimension to the game because we can both play off the ball and on the ball and guard both spots.”
If there were worries about life after Martinelli, West and Reid are beginning to quiet them.
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