Speaking to the media just moments after Northwestern’s season-ending loss to Purdue on Thursday, head coach Chris Collins outlined what he believes to be the key to returning his program to the NCAA tournament: a commitment from the administration to invest heavily in its men’s basketball.
“It’s big business now,” said Collins. “You’ve got to invest…it’s got to trickle down [from] the administration to the coaching staff. Everybody’s got to be in alignment in order to win because the programs that are winning, that’s what they’re doing. They’re aligned. There’s a commitment to winning with resources, with investment.”
Collins cited the upcoming search for Northwestern new president as crucial piece for success. Henry Bienen is currently serving as the school’s interim president after Michael Schill stepped down from the role in September.
“Our new president that we bring in, is there going to be a commitment [to athletics]?” Collins asked. “I’ve always felt if you’re at a high level academic school and you strive to have the best undergraduate experience and the best hospital and Kellogg School of Business and all these graduate programs and the deal and all these things, why wouldn’t we also strive to be great at athletics? There’s a standard of excellence. We should want that, and we have the means to do that.”
The upcoming offseason will require a substantial financial commitment, both in terms of player acquisition and retention.
The sharks are no doubt circling promising true freshmen Jake West and Tre Singleton, who both showed flashes of real potential during their first years in Evanston. Singleton, the only consensus four-star recruit in Northwestern’s class of 2025, started all but three games for the ‘Cats, finishing fourth on the team in scoring and second in rebounds. West didn’t crack the Wildcat starting lineup until mid-January, but he may be the more highly sought-after of the two after a late-season breakout that featured an electric 18-point performance against Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Northwestern ‘culture’ can only go so far in the face of the million-dollar revenue share and name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts that rival programs will dangle in front of West and Singleton. The ‘Cats will have to pay to keep them both.
On the acquisition side, Northwestern will likely dip into the transfer portal with a force for a second consecutive season. The impending graduation of leading scorer Nick Martinelli leaves a massive void in offensive production. Juniors Arrinten Page and Jayden Reid are the leading returning scorers — if they stay, that is — both averaging just over 10 points per game. If Page and Reid come back for their senior seasons, Northwestern would still be entering 2026-27 with its lowest returning leading scorer since 2019-20, which also coincides with the lowest win total (eight) of Collins’ head coaching career. West scored in double figures during three of Northwestern’s final six games, but it would be a hefty ask for the point guard to shoulder the Wildcat offense in his second season after averaging 7.7 points as a starter in year one.
Scoring is not the only hole that Collins will have to fill, with the center position looming at the top of the list. If Page does transfer, Northwestern would have a stark lack of experience in its big man group. The ’Cats will have at least two bigs on scholarship in current freshman Cade Bennerman and incoming freshman Symon Ghai, but Bennerman didn’t see the floor this season, and it would be a risk to enter next year lacking a player over 6-foot-8 with collegiate experience.
The ‘Cats brought in the highest-rated transfer class in program history ahead of this season, and Collins has been honest in admitting the shortcomings of that three-man group, which included Page from Cincinnati, Reid from USF and Max Green from Holy Cross.
“We’ve got to be better,” he said on Thursday night in response to a question asking what lessons he learned from last season’s transfer portal cycle. “That’s not not a knock on players, but we didn’t have enough. We weren’t equipped with what we needed going through the grind of the Big Ten this year…We’ve got to do a better job with roster construction.”
Page, Reid and Green undoubtedly represent Northwestern’s largest-ever spending in the transfer portal, both on account of their respective pedigrees and an overall increase in the cost of top talent across college basketball. Reid and Green both garnered interest from a litany of top programs before committing to the ‘Cats. Yet Collins still reportedly struck out on a few of his major targets, specifically at the center and forward positions.
Before Page announced his commitment on April 25, the ‘Cats brought Youngstown State’s Gabe Dynes and Valparaiso’s Cooper Schwieger to Evanston on official visits, and Northwestern was also connected to Grand Canyon’s Duke Brennan, among others. Dynes and Schwieger committed to USC and Wake Forest respectively, though neither was an impact player for their new teams. Brennan, on the other hand, was a Third-Team All-Big East selection this year at Villanova, averaging 12.4 points and 10.3 rebounds for the NCAA tournament-bound Wildcats.
While acknowledging the lack of hard information here — while unlikely, it’s still possible that Page was Northwestern’s primary target throughout the process despite never taking an official visit — the timeline suggests that Northwestern fell short in its efforts to land its top choices.
Despite Collins’ recent reliance on the transfer portal, he has been insistent that he’d like “developing from within” to remain the program’s “core” model, as he put it during a media availability in late January.
After Northwestern’s loss to Purdue, he noted to reporters that the game featured four different players who had stayed at their respective programs for four years in Martinelli and Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn, Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer.
“That was pretty cool. I root for that because I really admire players that stick it through,” he said.
Collins said he remains optimistic that Northwestern’s model can endure in the new era of college basketball, citing the success of “peer programs” who have committed to creating the necessary “alignment” through their respective universities.
“There’s no reason we can’t be one of those places in my mind,” he said. “I’m fully convinced, but it’s going to takeeverybody together to do that.”