INDIANAPOLIS — Not a first-team all-Big Ten player, eh?
According to the conference’s men’s basketball coaches as well as the media, Northwestern’s Nick Martinelli isn’t.
That’s their view even though Martinelli led all Big Ten players in scoring during the regular season. Even though he carried an injury-ravaged team on his back, and continues to do so, while logging more minutes than any other high-major player in the country. Even though he keeps keeping the Wildcats in games even though they don’t seem to have any business being in them.
And what now? Martinelli has led Northwestern into the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament. In Game 1 of the event at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the sly lefty went off for 16 first-half points and ended with 28 as the 13th-seeded Wildcats put 12th-seeded Minnesota away 72-64.
The Wildcats (17-15) will take on fifth-seeded Wisconsin at approximately 2:30 p.m. Thursday.
Martinelli has scored 15 or more in 17 straight games and been in double figures in 25 straight, the longest such streak for a Northwestern player in 25 years.
Still, the coaches’ and media votes left Martinelli as a second-teamer. Purdue’s Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn, Wisconsin’s John Tonje and Nebraska’s Brice Williams were first-teamers on both counts. The coaches’ other first-teamer was Maryland’s Derik Queen, while the media went with Michigan’s Vlad Goldin.
The interesting one of those names is Williams, the league’s second-leading scorer — at 20 per game, trailing Martinelli’s 20.2 — on a team that was no better than the Wildcats. In fact, the Huskers collapsed down the stretch, losing their last five games and not even qualifying for this tournament. The 6-7 Martinelli was a better rebounder than the 6-7 Williams, too — 6.2 a game to 4.1 — and impacted games every bit as much, and probably more.
The last player to lead the Big Ten in scoring without receiving first-team recognition: Penn State’s D.J. Newbill in 2014-25.
Northwestern won a Big Ten tournament game for the first time since 2022 and has beaten Minnesota (15-17) in five of the schools’ last six meetings.