Media Days Notebook: Collins talks extension and rotations, while Martinelli stays humble
ROSEMONT, Ill.-Head coach Chris Collins, forward Nick Martinelli and guard Justin Mullins took the podium to talk about the program’s 2025-26 season on the second day of Big Ten Media Days at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center.
Here are my takeaways from what the trio of Wildcats had to say.
Collins talks decision to return
Hearts leapt into throats all across Northwestern nation in the aftermath of the 2024-25 season, as multiple programs were reported to be courting Collins away from Evanston. After a tense couple of weeks, Collins inked an extension to stay in Evanston through 2030.
“At the end of every season, I’ve always tried to a self-reflection about where the program was, where I was, what’s going on with my family… Am I still happy, where I want to be? Am I still hungry about what I’m doing?” Collins said, reflecting on that time period. “A lot in my life has changed. I’m an empty nester, my kids are out of the house… At the end of the day, the legacy piece means so much to me.
“Being a part of Northwestern, I feel like the program is kind of my baby. And it just wasn’t something I was ready to leave. I’m still hungry about what we’re doing… My heart was always leading me towards staying here.”
There’s no question that Collins has been a transformative coach for the program. He’s led them to their first three NCAA Tournament appearances, moved into second place all-time in wins and overseen a total revamp of facilities with Welsh-Ryan Arena.
He said that part of this extension process was continuing to press his advantage and leverage more support from the university in the next frontiers: coaching compensation and, especially, revenue-share to compensate players.
“More than anything, I want to make sure we’re on par with what our competitors are doing,” he said. “We’ve done an incredible job with facilities. But now from a resource perspective, are we investing at a level to try and beat [the best] in our conference?
“That doesn’t mean we have to be at the top of the list, but you have to be in the ballpark in order to compete… Fortunately, [athletic director] Mark Jackson has been nothing but phenomenal… Everybody wants this thing to keep moving in a positive direction. I think everyone sees the progress we’ve made over the last three years.”
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Martinelli stays humble in NIL era
Martinelli cut a striking figure next to the dapper Mullins. Mullins got his suit from Suitsupply in Chicago. Martinelli had to borrow his from a teammate.
That’s right. Even though his NIL compensation is likely seven figures, when told he needed a suit for the event, Martinelli, like a typical college kid, procrastinated until just days before the event. Then he called his mom and got some disastrous news.
“I called my mom a couple days ago about my suit and apparently I had ripped my suit pants,” Martinelli said.
So they he went to the next name on his emergency call list: 6-foot-9 walkon forward Gus Hurlburt, who is close to the same build as Martinelli.
“So, I called Gus. I said, ‘Yo, I need a suit.’ He said, ‘I got you, come over whenever.'” Martinelli said. “So, shout out to Gus.”
Martinelli, whose ride on campus is still his brother’s hand-me-down car, is certainly a throwback, on and off the court, even if he was the Big Ten’s scoring leader last season.
Even the mustache he was sporting was a last-minute decision. He opted to channel a Brooks Barnhizer-like look while getting ready that morning.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked if the mustache was a long-term choice. “I was just in the shower this morning like, ‘What are we going to do?’ Decided on the mustache.”
Collins willing to deepen rotation
After three seasons of veteran-laden teams, Northwestern will look very different in 2025-26. There are eight new players — five freshmen and three transfers — meaning a majority of the roster will be new faces.
Collins talked about how he may shift the team’s philosophy from the spartan rotations of the past seasons, when the team’s stars routinely ranked towards the top of the country in minutes, and just two or three players came off the bench; to the deeper, 9-to-10-player model that Michigan State has often showed under legendary coach Tom Izzo.
“We’ve always played a shorter bench, I’ve never been afraid to play guys 35+ minutes in a game,” he said. “I’d love to get Nick’s minutes down so he could be fresher at the end of games and play more guys, and play a little bit faster on tempo. We’ve been slower at times because of those heavy minutes…
“That’s going to be an adjustment playing nine or ten guys in a game versus eight… We’re going to have a [different] kind of team. Michigan State was like this last year.”
The Wildcats may feel like a team on two timelines. On one hand, the team has a whole heap of new talent in their rotation, and all eight of them have multiple years of eligibility remaining, leading to the impression that this could be the start of a rebuilding process. But at the same time, the team also has Martinelli, the conference’s leading scorer and a bona fide star returning for his senior year, so they would seem to want to maximize their wins now.
Collins was adamant about where the bar is set.
“We have to have urgency, what Nick Martinelli has meant to this program… [His] legacy, like I talked about, is important to me, it’s important to him,” Collins said. “That’s why he came back. I don’t know other players to play in three tournaments in our program’s history. He’d be the first…
“We’re in win-now mode. While we’re winning, are we also going to continue to develop for our future? That’s going to be a big part of what we do because that’s our secret sauce. We’re not going to be an eight [players from] the portal, eight [players to] the portal kind of team. We’re going to be a high-school recruiting team, and that’s how we’re going to continue to build.”
No worries about shorter guards, few centers
Northwestern has two noticeable size discrepancies on their roster. First is at point guard, where presumed starter Jayden Reid, a transfer from South Florida, is listed at 5-foot-10.
“He’s a tough kid, a New York City kid,” Collins said. “He’s been the kid that’s always played against bigger guys… I’m not worried about it. People thought Boo was undersized at 6-foot. If you’re tough, if you have fight, [height is] overrated. I’m comfortable with him, I think he’ll translate.”
Buie was listed at 6-foot-2 in the Northwestern program but apparently a couple years post-graduation have given Collins some candor.
The other discrepancy is at center. Transfer Arrinten Page is the only player taller than 6-foot-10 with previous college experience. Collins isn’t worried about that, either, because of the rebounding he has at forward with Martinelli, Tre Singleton and Tyler Kropp.
“[I feel comfortable] and the reason why is we have big wings,” he said. “I think you can get away sometimes with a little bit more of an undersized big [that way]. Tyler Kropp is 6-foot-9, I think he’s going to be able to hold his own at our level. Especially if he’s playing with Nick and Tre and Justin, or with Angelo Ciaravino, who’s adding 15 pounds of muscle at 6-foot-7, or Max Green, who could be a two-guard at 6-foot-7.
“I think when you’re positionally big at other spots, sometimes you can get away with it.”
Collins thinks that Page’s upside, combined with his team’s size and versatility at the 2-4 spots will compensate for any lack of size at the 5. He also teased the possibility of Martinelli getting some minutes at the 5.
“We’re playing around with that a little bit… That becomes a tough matchup for other teams and we trap the post so we don’t see a lot of one-on-one situations,” he said. “Obviously we’d have loved to add two, three or four 7-footers; everybody would. But we have to go with what we’ve got, and I feel comfortable because of our positional size [elsewhere] that we can play a little bit smaller at the five.”
Northwestern athletics GM crossover
Northwestern athletics hired a general manager to oversee their revenue sharing era this offseason: Christian Sarkisian, who was previously a scout from the Cincinnati Bengals. As you can infer, Sarkisian is a football mind who has been intricately involved in the football team’s operations.
But he’s still in charge of overseeing the whole department’s flow of money, and Collins likes what he’s brought to the position.
“Christian has been great so far and he’s been really good in trying to learn more about the basketball landscape,” Collins said. “He’s got great experience from the NFL, understanding the similarities and differences in college sports. The agents that are involved with basketball are different than the agents in football, but he’s been a really good resource. He’s dove in with us.”
Northwestern also has a director of basketball operations in Chris Lauten, who joined the program with Collins. He’s been the program’s “liaison” with Sarkisian as they divide and allocate the team’s revenue share within the $20.5 million House settlement annual allotment.
Collins would like some more autonomy for his program down the line, but is satisfied with the situation as it stands
“I feel comfortable with our position that’s in place. Ideally, at some point, I’d like to have our own basketball GM,” he said. “We’re not there yet, but hopefully down the road… But I’ve been pleased with the job he’s done, and what it does is take it off my plate.
“Over the last couple years, I have had to be the coach and I’ve also been involved with contract negotiations, and that’s a tough thing. So, I want to be the coach, not the GM… To have Christian in place to talk to these agents and go through the money aspect has been a big help.”
Recruiting bump from recent success
Collins can’t talk specifically about new commit Jayden Hodge, a four-star forward and Top 60 player in the Class of 2026, because of NCAA rules. But he did talk generally about the team’s recent success in recruiting.
Hodge gives Northwestern back-to-back classes with a four-star player, joining Singleton from this freshman class.
“Our success and our players’ individual success had led to more excitement on the recruiting trail,” Collins said. “Tre Singleton, I don’t know if he comes to Northwestern if he doesn’t see what Brooks and Nick have done as those hybrid forwards.
“Point guards want to come here because of watching Boo Buie; things of that nature. When you have really good players that do really good things, and then you win, it leads to recruits taking note of it.”
NU has a large class coming in this season with five players in their Class of 2025. Reading between the lines in Collins’ comments, it seems like at least three of them will be in the rotation. Singleton will start, Kropp will be quickly involved in the rotation and guard Jake West will be a deep bench option. It’s likely that 7-foot center Cade Bennerman and guard Phoenix Gill are redshirt candidates.
