Despite a Disappointing Season, Nick Martinelli Is Leaving a Legacy at Northwestern

But no matter how individually successful he has been, Martinelli’s relationship with his final two college seasons is complicated. Because for him and for Northwestern, winning consistently has also been unsolvable. He’ll analyze every play gone wrong in those quiet moments on the bus or plane, wishing he had done more. The depths of a disappointing season have kept him up at night, wondering.

“Questioning whether or not I can win and I can impact winning,” Martinelli tells Hoops HQ.

In his four seasons in college, the town of Evanston has become an extension of Martinelli’s hometown of Glenview, just 10 miles west. His older brother, Jimmy, had recently moved back to Evanston from Nashville, Tennessee. His parents, brothers, classmates have been in the stands at every home game. He wants to win for the program that took a chance on him when no other high-major would.

But even at home, the Wildcats have lost seven times, including a 70-66 Senior Night loss to Purdue on Wednesday — where 28 points from Martinelli wasn’t enough to hold a lead. A loss to Michigan on Feb. 11, though, was especially painful. The Wildcats led the eventual Big Ten regular season champions by 16 points with 14 minutes, 22 seconds left. But just 4:44 later, that lead was down to two. Michigan rode the momentum to a 12-point win, 87-75, as Martinelli shot 5 of 22 from the field. After the game, he told his longtime trainer, Christian Sotos, they should meet to get shots up the following day. But Northwestern lost again in its next game at Nebraska, too. This season, Martinelli has accomplished more than he ever has individually. Enough so that he might even reach his loftiest childhood goals.

“I think he’s incredibly underrated,” Northwestern coach Chris Collins says. “That guy as a college basketball player is definitely one of the best in the country. He is in the high, upper-echelon of guys who have ever played in this program and he’ll be forever remembered. No question about it.”

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But the way Martinelli discusses his own accomplishments almost makes them seem like defects. Most players high up on that scoring list, he says, are on losing basketball teams. He’s always been a winner. At least, he thought he was.

Martinelli has no experience with losing like this — at least not since his brother, Dom, would bend the rules in their backyard one-on-one battles. Martinelli says he has only taken basketball seriously for around six to eight years. Before then, his introduction to the game was being tackled into the garage or grass by his older brothers.

That didn’t stop Martinelli from letting his Glenbrook South High School coach Phil Ralston know that he was going to play in the NBA someday while Martinelli was just a sophomore. It was, frankly, a ridiculous statement at the time. Martinelli had played freshman basketball the season prior, and he started his sophomore season playing on the sophomore team. Martinelli joined the varsity five or six games into the season. The team was already well on its way to being a winner, but Martinelli’s brother Dom said Nick “gave us new energy.” 

Nick and Dom were both fierce competitors who were singularly-driven by winning. But they also both played with a … style. Herky-jerky? Old-school? Unconventional? Whatever you want to call tall wings working out of the post and attempting floaters ad nauseum. Ralston had seen the same sequence countless times: A catch by Martinelli in mid-post, a pivot to his right, watching the defense react and then stepping through to his left for a shot. To Ralston, that’s just a “Martinelli move.”

His trainer, Sotos, says it’s called a “stuck spin.” Martinelli’s deft touch around the rim is his superpower. All of Martinelli’s unnatural-looking finishes are shots he’s practiced repeatedly with game situations in mind.

Glenbrook South went 33-3 his senior season, establishing Martinelli as the most significant winner in program history. He had been committed to Elon and then-coach Mike Schrage, whom he hit it off with early in the recruiting process. Schrage left for Duke in April 2022, so just a few months before Martinelli was set to graduate, his father, Jim, remembered making a call to the staff that was left at Elon. It was only fair to them that Martinelli would be allowed to open up his recruitment again. 

Martinelli was visiting Jimmy in Nashville when he decommitted. Then the phone started ringing. It was supposed to be a vacation, but Martinelli instead took calls from Jimmy’s apartment bathroom and in the car from place to place.

“The phone was non-stop,” Jimmy says. “I was like, come on, we’re supposed to take you guys to Broadway … We did the next day.”

Jim said they fielded calls from about 20 to 30 schools, mostly mid-majors. But Dom walked on to Northwestern as a freshman before transferring to St. Thomas, so the family had a prior relationship with the staff. Martinelli even knew quite a few of the players. He played pick-up with his brother and several Northwestern teammates — Boo Buie, Chase Audige, Ty Berry and Matthew Nicholson — while still in high school. 

The offer came in, and Martinelli couldn’t believe that there were people unsure about it. “I was like, ‘Dude, this is my best offer,” he says. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

But Big Ten brand or not, Northwestern didn’t have the recent success that familiarized its status with the casual observer. That changed quickly. Martinelli contributed to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments teams at Northwestern in his first two seasons. Martinelli poured so much into those seasons that the Wildcats staff had to ban him from the gym for periods, fearing the recourse on his body. But they’d still catch him on the cameras in the facility.

“And they wouldn’t even let him practice the next day,” says his former Wildcats teammate Luke Hunger.

As a junior, he was the guy again. That was partially due to unfortunate circumstances, though, with graduate guard Jalen Leach and senior guard Brooks Barnhizer each suffering injuries that derailed a season that Collins felt was on its way to a third-straight NCAA Tournament berth. And Martinelli found controlling outcomes in that role to be more difficult at the college level. 

A game against Purdue on Jan. 5, 2025 stood out — he felt he couldn’t do anything. Martinelli went 2 of 8 from the field with 10 points. It was among the many somber bus rides home that season, where Northwestern went from NCAA Tournament team to barely scraping together a winning season, finishing 17-16. Still, it was the first time in program history the Wildcats achieved three-straight winning seasons. That’s what made the feeling this season so new.

Martinelli says he’s in a blessed situation. But with it, he sees firsthand a painful dichotomy — he enters some of the best environments, against some of the best teams in college basketball at the top of opponents’ minds. He scored 14 points at Wisconsin on Dec. 3, 2025, 28 points at Michigan State on Jan. 8 and 34 at Rutgers on Jan. 11. But Northwestern lost every game.

Losses in 11 of 13 games, including two five-game losing streaks, had him questioning everything. Collins says that he kept assuring Martinelli that his career isn’t defined by any 15-game stretch. And for as much as he admits the losing hurts, Collins says he has never seen the senior too high or too low. Because Martinelli acknowledges that somewhere within the joy of a win and the agony of another defeat, of course, there is a middle ground.

“To say you’re not a winning player, but yet you’re one of the all time winningest guys in the history of the school,” Collins says, “that’s just him taking it to heart. And he’s always been that way. I appreciate that about him because he always thinks he can do better.”

A third NCAA Tournament berth in his four-year career might not be in the cards for Martinelli, but there’s still time to help Northwestern’s program prosper. “The way that people view Northwestern, I think it’s better than when I had committed here,” Martinelli says. “But obviously, we’re not as good as those teams my freshman and sophomore year.”

Yet there’s young players worth pouring into. And perhaps they might take it a step further like he did for his brother. Northwestern picked up back-to-back wins over Maryland and Indiana headed into a matchup against Oregon on Feb. 28. After a rough first half against the Ducks where he shot 1 of 8 from the field, Martinelli kept pushing. Because as much as the shots weren’t falling, he felt good.

The Wildcats had trailed by as many as 12 points in the second half. But Martinelli made 6 of 7 shots down the stretch, tying the game at 59 on a jumper with 4:10 left. He missed his next two shots, though, including a jumper with 18 seconds to play. 

“And I was like, I might have choked it for the guys,” Martinelli says. But the ball came to him again.

Down 62-61, he caught the ball on an out of bounds play, took two dribbles right, then pivoted his back to the basket. He felt the Oregon defender on his back stand tall. Teammates were calling for the ball. It didn’t look like he had a shot. Yet he has an innate ability to find an opening when all seems lost. Call it a “Martinelli move.” Or just his “stuck spin.”

Martinelli dipped his shoulder and stepped through towards the left side of the rim, floating in a shot which hung on the rim for more than a second before falling. Oregon’s heave at the buzzer misfired and, after a third-straight win, Martinelli sprinted towards the baseline and flexed at the crowd. 

It’s a perspective he’s gained over the course of a tough season: These moments matter.

“As much as I failed and as much as we’ve lost, we’re going to look back on this (and) we’re not going to think about all the bad things that happened,” Martinelli said. “As long as you have breath, as long as you have health, you can get better. And I understand that.”