For the first time since 2019, Boo Buie will not be suiting up for the Northwestern Wildcats. The program’s all-time leading scorer is gone, leaving a major void in the roster. The media pundits have of course jumped all over this, picking the ‘Cats to finish 16th in the new 18-team Big Ten.
Just one issue: someone forgot to tell the team.
“We’re still going to be able to compete at the highest level,” graduate guard Ty Berry said Thursday at the Big Ten Media Days in Rosemont, Ill. “Our coaches do a great job of giving us the confidence to go out there and compete. I feel like although we’re going to miss Boo, we’re still gonna be able to do our jobs.”
Of course, Buie had several jobs for Northwestern last year — point guard, leader, closer, alpha dog. With No. 0 off to the professional ranks, those mantles — at least in part — seem likely to fall on senior guard Brooks Barnhizer. After earning a spot on the All-Big Ten preseason team, Barnhizer is ready for the challenge.
“I would like to be that guy. I think I’m ready for that role,” Barnhizer said Thursday. “ I can’t wait to go out there and show that people were right when they did put me on that list.”
The preseason accolade is typically a rarity for Northwestern, as Barnhizer himself noted.
“We kind of know that year in and year out, we aren’t really going to get the accolades or the high expectations going into it. At this point, it’s part of the formula,” he told the media. “It just kind of shows what people think of us, so we kind of just use it as motivation. It’s kind of what we do every year.”
The scornful attitude towards preseason prognostications flows right from the top of the program. Coach Chris Collins is now looking to take Northwestern to a third straight NCAA Tournament, something that seemed impossible a mere half-decade ago. A big reason why the Wildcats are on the cusp of yet more history is their coach’s mentality.
“I always carry a chip on my shoulder,” Collins said Thursday. “And I think our players have that, we have that mentality. That’s who we are. We’re a chip on our shoulder, hard nosed, tough, gritty program, and we don’t really care how we’re viewed.”
So if the team doesn’t care how others view them, how do they view themselves?
“I know we got a lot left on our plate, that we want to go back to another NCAA Tournament,” Barnhizer said. “We know that it’s came a long way but we still have another year to push it even further and push that envelope. So we’re excited for it.”
That push will be aided tremendously by a heaping helping of continuity. Despite losing Buie, Ryan Langborg and Blake Preston, Northwestern still returns 63% of its minutes from last season, the highest mark in the conference. In a season of massive transition for the Big Ten, the Wildcats will lean on what’s staying the same.
“Our formula has got to be our continuity, our chemistry,” Collins said. “The fact that we have six of our top eight back, we have to hopefully turn that into a strength.”
Formula was a buzzword throughout the afternoon, and for good reason. The last two seasons have seen a run of success unmatched in program history, which the team credits to both coaching and execution.
“For our program, we built a formula. And our team is really good at listening to our coaches and following that formula,” Berry said. “Everybody knows what their role is and how every night they can help us.”
Of course, with Buie and Langborg gone, offensive roles were in flux over the offseason. Both Barnhizer and Collins mentioned junior forward Nick Martinelli as a player who’s poised for a breakout season.
“He’s primed for a really big jump. To kind of see his growth last year is beautiful, and then I know he’s gonna take another big step,” Barnhizer said.
Collins added that for Martinelli, “The foreign trip was great for him, because he had the ball in his hands a lot. We were playing through him a lot overseas…It was really good to kind of put him in positions where he had to be a real go-to guy.”
While the offense will no longer run through Buie, the players see a silver lining to that — now the offense can be initiated by multiple players.
“Our team now is very versatile. We’ve got guys who can play multiple positions, like Brooks — he helps us out at the one, two, three or the four,” Berry said. “We have a lot of versatile guards who can step into that role and help us alleviate the pressure.”
As for Barnhizer, he noted that it wasn’t just playmaking that will be more egalitarian — the scoring will as well.
“It’s really cool, just because we’ll have practices where somebody will have like 20-some points, and then next practice, somebody else has that,” he explained. “Once we all get healthy and all get out there, I think it’ll be really a beautiful brand of basketball.”
And that brand of basketball just might be enough to prove the pundits wrong — for the third straight season. Once the ball is tipped off, any sort of prediction becomes moot, and it’s all about what happens on the hardwood.
“The great thing about basketball, which I love, is basketball is not figure skating, it’s not gymnastics, and it’s not boxing. Judges don’t decide who wins. You decide who wins by being between the lines,” Collins noted. “You want to test yourself against the best. I know our guys are looking forward to it.”
