In a conference loaded with elite high-end talent, Nick Martinelli is more than deserving of First Team recognition.
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Northwestern has not had an All-Big Ten First Team honoree three years in a row since Evan Eschmeyer completed the feat in 1999. With Boo Buie earning All-Big Ten First Team honors each of the last two seasons, Nick Martinelli’s old school, flipper-flinging game has a case to change that.
As the Big Ten regular season ended Sunday with Oregon’s win over Washington, Martinelli’s 20.2 points and 37.5 minutes a night finished atop the conference, becoming the first Wildcat to lead the Big Ten in scoring since John Shurna’s 20.0 points per game in 2011-12.
If the 20.2 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists on 46.7% shooting and 35.2% from three stat line doesn’t sell you, don’t worry. The analytics back up his case for All-Big Ten First Team honors too.
If you need a refresher on PRPG! and D-PRPG, PRPG! is a Bart Torvik staple that measures offense contributed over a replacement-level player, adjusted for opponent, pace and usage. D-PRPG is simply PRPG!’s defensive-minded brother. In essence, these two stats help measure the most valuable offensive and defensive players in the conference.
Of players who’ve played at least 70% of their team’s minutes this season, Martinelli is one of three Big Ten players top-10 in both PRPG! and D-PRPG and more importantly, the only non-guard (Braden Smith and Ja’Kobi Gillespie) of the group.
Offensively, seeing Martinelli eighth among all conference players in PRPG! is a little surprising given his 24 consecutive games in double figures, including eight games with 25-plus points. But a top-ten finish in a conference loaded with talented scorers is no knock. Plus, Martinelli’s 232 made field goals are a single-season program record, while his active 16-game streak with 15-plus points leads all major conference players.
However, Martinelli’s ability to lock in on the defensive end is what proves he’s one of the league’s five best overall players. Northwestern’s junior finished seventh in the conference in D-PRPG among players who played at least 50% of their team’s minutes. Without Northwestern having a healthy Brooks Barnhizer, the likely runaway favorite for Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year if he’d stayed healthy, that’s even more pertinent from an impact standpoint.
On the visual above, Smith and John Tonje are locks for First-Team recognition, but with Martinelli huddled in the clump with Brice Williams and Dawson Garcia, it feels as if only one of that trio finds their way onto the First Team. Not only are all three on seven-win Big Ten teams, but all three handled massive scoring loads, meaning giving one an edge becomes difficult.
With Nebraska’s loss to Iowa Sunday and failure to make the conference tournament, that likely pushes Williams out of consideration after a tough seven-point outing on 3-of-12 shooting against the Hawkeyes. Garcia and Martinelli are incredibly similar on paper as elite scoring forwards on mediocre squads that pulled off some big wins at home, but Martinelli’s defense and league lead in scoring gives him an initial edge. Add 29 points in Northwestern’s 75-63 win at Minnesota, regardless of Garcia’s 26 points in that game, and the case is clear for Martinelli over Garcia.
Another element of All-Big Ten First Team consideration is impact and importance to team success. That doesn’t necessarily need to manifest itself in traditional box score stats, but players that teams rely on the most absolutely have an argument for conference recognition. The two easiest ways to measure that is the percentage of a team’s minutes a player plays (minutes percentage) and their usage rate.
Once again, Williams and Garcia loom in the upper right-hand corner, but Martinelli and Smith, the favorite for Big Ten Player of the Year, are the runaway leaders all the way to the right. These are the players Big Ten coaches rely on the most; the players that coaches trust the most; the ones critical to team success.
With minutes percentage on the X-axis and usage rate on the Y-axis, we’re measuring the intangibles. This has nothing to do with traditional statistics. This is simply who coaches can’t afford to take off the floor and trust with the ball in their hands to deliver. And if you roll back the tape of every Big Ten team’s regular season, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody as vital and instrumental to a team’s success than Martinelli.
For a program that hadn’t experienced a game-winning buzzer beater since Taphorn’s pass to Pardon in 2017, Martinelli sent Welsh-Ryan Arena into a frenzy with a walk-off winner against Maryland. He followed it up later in conference play with a crafty last-second finish to beat USC at home. Throw in a game-high 27 points, including seven of them in overtime to fend off Illinois in December. The list goes on.
And although Martinelli’s inclusion on the first team is data-proven, voters are often swayed by narratives. For a team that saw 31.4 points per game vanish from its roster with injuries to Barnhizer and Jalen Leach, Martinelli’s 21.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game since Northwestern lost both players helped the Wildcats rattle off three crucial victories to clinch a Big Ten Tournament berth when many assumed the Wildcats were dead.
If that’s not All-Big Ten First Team material, I’m not quite sure what is.