Some college basketball players, you really can’t take off the floor. They shoulder too much of a load and mean too much to the whole operation. Grab some bench and enjoy a nice breather? The whole house of cards might come crashing down.
That’s a nice platitude, anyway.
Then there’s Northwestern’s Nick Martinelli. With him, it’s as true as it gets.
Good luck finding anyone else who played all 45 minutes in each of back-to-back overtime games this season, as Martinelli did against Maryland and Michigan. And who played all 40 minutes in back-to-back-to-back games, as the 6-7, 220-pound junior did against Rutgers, Wisconsin and USC. And who was credited with 39 minutes played in six games outside of the aforementioned five, not to mention three others at 38.
You’ll have to look mighty hard to find anyone other than Martinelli, a former Glenbrook South star, who has played all those minutes in so many games and done so on a power-conference team against a parade of big-bopper opponents. You’ll look and look and eventually realize: Son of a gun, there’s no one else.
“Getting to play as many minutes as I do is such a privilege,” Martinelli said during a Friday phone call while lazing about.
But we kid Martinelli, because the next time he takes a load off will be the first in too long to remember. At 37.6 minutes per game on the season, he leads all high-major players in the country. His average is the highest in the Big Ten since Penn State’s Talor Battle logged 38.1 per game in 2010-11 and the highest at Northwestern since then-coach Bill Carmody squeezed 37.7 per game out of Michael “Juice” Thompson in 2009-10.
Battle and Thompson were little guys, though, more than half a foot shorter and 50 or so pounds lighter than Martinelli. If you don’t think it’s harder for a larger human to get over the hump of all-out exhaustion, you’ve never been that larger human.
“You’ve got to be ready for war, for anything that happens,” Martinelli said, “for aches and pains throughout the game and getting hit for 40 minutes. You’ve got to just weather the storm.”
The load on Martinelli has gotten even greater since Brooks Barnhizer, one of the best Wildcats in the Chris Collins era, had to shut it down due to injury, the final game of his career coming on January 29. Less than a week after that, on February 4, Jalen Leach, the other member of the team’s high-scoring trio, tore an ACL. Since then, Martinelli has kind of gone it alone, no disrespect to his remaining teammates. The Wildcats have fallen to 14-13 overall and 5-11 in the Big Ten, with Martinelli in the middle of everything game after game, giving them their one best shot.
“Things have definitely been different this year,” he said, “and therefore have been different on the mind.”
But hang on a second here, because we’ve gone to ridiculous lengths without mentioning whom the Big Ten’s leading scorer happens to be. Any guesses? We’ll wait.
It’s Martinelli, at 19.7 points per game, leading Minnesota’s Dawson Garcia by a hair. If he keeps his lead, he’ll become only the second Wildcat to top the Big Ten in scoring in the last 66 years. The last one to do it was John Shurna in 2011-12. Before that, it was Joe Ruklick in 1958-69 and Ray Ragelis in 1950-51, but you probably knew that already.
Martinelli’s best attribute in high school was how hard he worked and the shape he kept himself in. Peers asked him all the time how — why — in the world he worked out as often and doggedly as he did. The answer went back to his basketball-playing older brothers and especially to his dad, who’d drilled into him to never ask out of a game due to being tired. The best way to do that, Martinelli figured, was to train himself to not even sense the urge.
But coming out of high school, Martinelli’s only high-major offer was from Northwestern. And as a freshman on an NCAA Tournament-bound team, he played sparingly.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say it hurt being on the bench,” he said. “But in retrospect, it’s given me a lot to think about. I really grasp the fact now that I’m getting this opportunity and how grateful I should be for it.”
Last season, Martinelli started 11 times in all and averaged 8.8 points in 26 minutes, no small part of another NCAA-bound squad. But Boo Buie and Barhizer were the killers — machines — averaging 36.9 and 36.7 minutes, respectively, Nos. 1 and 2 in the Big Ten. Martinelli respected the hell out of them for it. Everyone around the team did.
None of them could have realized just how much Martinelli would be leaned on one season later.
“I definitely feel the love for it,” he said, “although sometimes I kind of get the sense that people feel bad for me about it.”
It’s only because there are times when 20, 30 or even 40 grueling minutes have gone by, players are gasping for anything resembling a breath and one can only look at Martinelli and wonder how on earth he’s still upright.
“Really,” he said, “they should be jealous of me that I get to be on this stage as much as I am.”
Rare is the player built for such a task.