Miller Kopp enters the transfer portal

Northwestern went through a difficult 2020-21 season, losing 13 straight games and finishing 12th in the Big Ten.

The offseason for the Wildcats is now off to a rough start as well.

Miller Kopp, a program mainstay who has started 74 games over the last three years, has decided to leave the program and enter the transfer portal.

Kopp started all 24 games for the Wildcats this past season, averaging 11.3 points per game, second-most on the team. Still, he struggled for much of the season.

Purportedly Northwestern's best shooter, Kopp shot 39.6% from the field and just 33% from deep in this, his junior year. Those numbers were down across the board from 2019-20, when Kopp led NU with 13.1 points per game while shooting 41.2% overall and 39.6% from beyond the arc. The downtick in his numbers was due in large part to an extended cold streak he endured during the last month of the season.

For his career, Kopp averaged 9.6 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game.

Kopp entered the program in 2018-19 as the highest-ranked recruit of the Chris Collins era. He was a four-star player, ranked as the No. 66 prospect in the nation, and chose Northwestern over Michigan, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Butler.

Kopp and fellow 2018 signee Pete Nance, No. 67 in the Rivals 100, were supposed to lead the Wildcats back to the NCAA Tournament a year after the school's first-ever appearance.

But that vision never materialized. Over Kopp's three years, Northwestern's record was 30-57 (.345) overall and just 13-46 (.220) in Big Ten play. The Wildcats have also suffered through losing streaks of at least 10 games each year.

Still, Kopp was a lethal shooter throughout his career, though he struggled to expand his game beyond that and was unable to create his own shot. This season, as the focal point of opposing defenses, he was often effectively taken out of games.

Kopp didn't hit more than five baskets in any of Northwestern's last 15 games and shot better than 40% in just two of those contests. After scoring in double figures 11 times in Northwestern's first 15 games, he reached that mark just twice over the last nine games as his points-per-game dropped from 13.7 to 11.3.

Kopp's departure will leave Northwestern with a gaping hole in their rotation that will likely need to be filled through the transfer portal. While his scholarship theoretically opens up a spot for five-star 2021 forward Patrick Baldwin Jr., that seems like a longshot at best. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where his father, and former Wildcat player and assistant Patrick Baldwin, is the head coach, is reported to be the frontrunner, and there are no indications that the Wildcats are in the hunt for Baldwin Jr. any longer.

This move also affects the future of Collins. The eighth-year coach still has four years left on the deal he signed in 2017, and Northwestern is without an athletic director who has the power to hire and fire coaches, so his dismissal seems highly unlikely.

But one of the main arguments for retaining Collins after a fourth straight bottom-five Big Ten finish was the theory that Kopp and Nance were returning seniors who would lead the Wildcats back to the tournament after Collins "reset" the program two seasons ago.

With Kopp now out of the picture, that already daunting climb from a 6-13 conference record to becoming an NCAA qualifier will be even steeper.