Northwestern head coach Chris Collins’ press conference after his team’s 75-69 loss to Wisconsin on Saturday didn’t focus much on the game. Rather, it had a larger scope than just the day’s result, as Collins shared the unfortunate news that star guard Brooks Barnhizer would miss the remainder of the season with a foot injury.
Collins was emotional in talking about Barnhizer’s absence, resilience through several injuries and what his presence means to the program. The senior guard was amid a career year, averaging 17.1 points, 8.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists.
Related: Wisconsin basketball current, former players react to Carter Gilmore’s career performance
It’s easy to project that Northwestern badly missed Barnhizer on the court on Saturday. The Badgers rode a 50-point second-half surge to the six-point victory. Part of that effort included out-rebounding the Wildcats 38-to-29 — a total that likely would have narrowed had the star guard suited up. He also may have provided a potential defensive answer to Badgers star wing John Tonje, who finished with 27 points and three assists on eight-of-18 shooting and five-of-11 from three.
While Wildcats guard Jalen Leach stepped up with 23 points and seven rebounds, the team ran out of offensive ammunition as the game drew to a close. The dots between Barnhizer’s absence and that performance aren’t challenging to connect.
With the loss, Northwestern falls to 12-10 overall and 3-8 in Big Ten play. The team has now lost three straight games and seven of nine since Jan. 1. Wisconsin’s comeback win severely damages its Big Ten and NCAA Tournament hopes.
Wisconsin, meanwhile, improved to 17-5 on the season and 7-4 in Big Ten play with the resume-building road victory. Northwestern entered ranked No. 55 in the NCAA NET Rankings, making it a Quad 1 matchup for both teams. The result also notably sent the Badgers up to No. 13 in KenPom and No. 23 in ESPN’s BPI, returning them to a string standing after their recent loss to Maryland.
For more on Saturday’s result, what it means for the Badgers and the impact of Barnhizer’s injury, here is some of what Northwestern coach Chris Collins said postgame:
On his team’s performance against a top-ranked Wisconsin team
“What I tried to tell our team more than anything was the best thing we can do to honor Brooks not being out there is play as hard as he does. I thought we did that tonight. Give Wisconsin credit, they’re a heck of a team. I thought we battled and defended them as good as you can defend them for a long stretch of the game. They’re very potent offensively. They have multiple guys that can shoot, score and make plays. There’s a reason why they’re ranked in the top 25 and have the wins they do. Because they have a really good team, and they have older, veteran guys.
A night like tonight, a guy like [Steven] Crowl doesn’t have it going, or [John] Blackwell doesn’t really have it going, you get Carter Gilmore coming off the bench getting 15 and seven. You get Nolan Winter stepping up and making a couple big threes. And obviously Tonje, he’s one of the better players in our league. He’s been phenomenal all year long. I thought he made some tough ones. We tried to make it hard on him. And holding them to 25 points was huge in the first half. We just couldn’t sustain it in the second. I thought we ran out of gas a little bit, obviously. I thought the crowd was great, I thought the energy was great. We fought. And I can’t fault our guys’ effort for that. We had a couple in-and-outs, a couple of shots that might’ve been different there. Even at the end, Jalen [Leach], it was a six-point game. He had the three go in-and-out with a minute to go. That one goes, all of the sudden it’s a one-possession game and who knows with a minute.
We have to keep plugging along. There’s no quit in this team, you guys know that. There’s going to be no quit in this team. We have to keep helping some of the younger guys now that are thrust into more minutes and bigger opportunities. We have to help them get better. And help them be able to contribute. I thought, you look at those top four on the stat sheet, I thought Nick [Martinelli], Matt [Nicholson], Jalen and Ty [Berry] as veteran guys, I thought they really set the tone. And the other guys. I thought everyone played really hard and competed, we just have to find a way to get some more production, where it’s not just three or four guys scoring. Because teams are too good in this league, coaches are too good. Anyway, tough loss. And just a tough couple of days for us. We’re a resilient bunch and we’re going to be ready to go on Tuesday night.”
On Brooks Barnhizer’s season-ending injury
“Brooks, if you guys knew what this guy, what this year has been like for him. He had worked so hard. His body never looked better, in the summer, the guy was ripped. Just jacked. And he was playing so well. He suffered an injury in August, right before we went overseas. That put him on the shelf for a while. Obviously, he worked his tail off with that injury to get back. Missed the whole summer, missed the rest of the fall, missed the first four games. Came back, and we were still managing it. We were still managing that injury a little bit in terms of his workload, in terms of what we were doing in between games. And he was playing really darn well, figuring it out and starting to feel better.
We kind of had a good rhythm going. And then he re-injured that same foot in the Michigan State game. And it was a different injury than the previous one from the summer. It was basically an injury that was going to cost him the rest of his season. And being the way Brooks is, he begged me to play in the Maryland game. He just said ‘coach, I have to play in that Maryland game, I have to put the jersey on one more time.’ And we talked to the doctors, and he said he was going to risk getting further damage if he wanted to try to gut it out. Obviously that game went really well. And we won at the buzzer. He and I met after that game and we just kind of talked about, ‘hey, I don’t want there to be any regrets. The way you played last night, it’s probably going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. When the time is right, I want you to know that you’ve left everything out there. So we kind of devised a plan after that Maryland game to kind of take it game-by-game. And see if we could. He couldn’t practice at all, he wasn’t doing anything inbetween games. Which is hard for a player, with your rhythm, with your conditioning, with game plan stuff. But it was the only way.
He played the Michigan game. He played the game at home against Indiana, we won, and he played great. And then the last two games, you guys kind of saw, he was laboring more and more. The Illinois game, he wasn’t moving well. And then the Rutgers game. When I looked out there, not only was he not moving well. But I could see that it was mentally killing him. Because he couldn’t do the things he wanted to do, and be that warrior and be that player. So he and I got together over the last couple of days and had some real heart-to-hearts. The decision was made to shut it down. So he’s not going to be with us for the rest of the year. It’s the right decision. But he left it all out there. I’m sorry I’m getting emotional, but I love that kid. To not see him be able to get out there today just sucks. But we’re going to play our butts of for him, and he’s going to be better for it…
He is going to require surgery…Everyone feels it’s going to be a full recovery, three-to-four months. Which should put him on track to have a great professional career, which I know he will. He’s got the will and he’s going to figure it out.”
On playing without Barnhizer
“Well he averages 18 or 19 points, nine rebounds, seven assists. It affects us. Especially when you come into the year, what you do is you build your team around your best players. So the emergence of Nick, a lot of what we’ve done is trying to build what we do around their skillsets and what they can do. So we’ll have to adjust a little bit.
I thought we did a good job today. All things considered, to get to 69 points. I thought we moved the ball pretty well. We made some shots. Again, we have to find some offense from other guys. But it’ll be a void. He was a playmaker for us. He had the ball, he made plays, he scored, he got to the glass, he got out in transition and made things happen. It will definitely be an adjustment. It was hard because the decision was just made yesterday. So for us, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to tinker too much. But I give our guys credit. As we get to practice tomorrow and we get ready for this last four-to-six weeks of the season and our last nine games, we’ll tailor things to make sure that we’re doing things to complement the guys we have out on the floor. It’s going to be a great opportunity for some of these other guys…
But of course, it’s a huge void. Brooks was a first-team All-Big Ten player. I saw Jacob put out stats that he was doing things that only Larry Bird and Ron Harper [did]. To say that’s not going to hurt us, I mean come on now. He’s a great player and he was our leader. He’s like a gladiator. We fed off that nature and made everybody feel strong playing with Brooks. We just have to honor that. Like I told the guys, he’s still here. He’s still on that bench. He won’t be out on the floor with us, but we have to play as hard as he played. And that’s what he would want us to. That’s what we need to do.”
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This article originally appeared on Badgers Wire: Wisconsin basketball Northwestern Chris Collins postgame comments
