EVANSTON-Starting guard Jalen Leach and star Brooks Barnhizer will both be close to 100% for Tuesday night's Big Ten opener against Iowa.

Leach played the last two games with an extensive wrap on his right hand, while Barnhizer missed the first four games of the regular season recovering from a foot injury he suffered in the offseason.

Collins waved away concerns for both of them.

Leach shot just 3-for-12 against Butler on Thanksgiving day, but his shooting stroke was seemingly unaffected in a 15-point performance in the team's win over UNLV the following night.

Collins confirmed that though it looks serious, there's no long-term concern with Leach's wrist.

"He fell in practice and sprained his wrist a little bit," Collins said. "Fortunately he was able to go out there in Arizona and managed it well. No lingering effects just managing a little trip and fall."

Leach still practiced in the wrap but based on Collins' remarks, it will be off sooner rather than later.

Barnhizer came back from his foot injury and barely missed a beat, averaging 20 points per game in his first four games.

"I think I'm close," Barnhizer said on if he feels in game shape yet. "I think the training staff did a great job when i was out of working and hitting stuff that let me get back in shape really quick when I could."

On top of the 20 points, Barnhizer is also averaging a career-high four assists per game and is frequently tasked with primary ballhandling duties for the team.

"I've worked on it a lot and I learned a lot from [graduated star point guard] Boo [Buie]," he said. "Being under him and how he played the game with so much poise, I just tried to learn from him. This summer I knew that we aren't really going to have a true point guard, it's going to be a lot of whoever gets the rebound takes it up...

"It's about being patient and having confidence in myself. I feel like I played it a lot in high school. and I have to carry that over to this level."

Collins wants high efficiency, not more shots from beyond the arc: Northwestern is one of the least frequent 3-point shooting teams in the country, ranking 350th out of 364 programs with 16.9 attempts from deep per game.

But Collins also has the only two players on the same team scoring 20 points per game apiece in Barnhizer and Nick Martinelli.

"You have two guys that are our two leading scorers that take the most shots; they're more mid-range guys and in the paint," he said. "So part of that is team makeup. I don't want to get so caught up in we have to take more 3s. I do feel like evaluating the film, we are missing opportunities to kick the ball and find guys in open areas.

"I think the more we play together, the more we'll get some inside-out action, which will lead to more 3s. But I don't think, with this team's makeup, that we're going to be shooting 30 or 40 threes a game."

He also wants the Wildcats' specialists, like senior Ty Berry, to hit the ones they're already taking. Berry has had a chilly start to the season, shooting 27.8% from the floor and 31.4% from distance, down more than 10 percentage points in both areas from where he was in 2023-24 before tearing his meniscus.

Collins still has faith in his fifth-year senior to find his form again.

"We have to get Ty going and coming of that injury he had, there's going to be rust," Collins said. "We've seen that, but he's working really hard and he's going to bust out."

Class of 2025 brightens Northwestern's future: Northwestern has had incredible success on the court with a series of veteran players these past two seasons, but their recruiting has been parabolic, which resulted in the program's struggles before the back-to-back tournament runs in 2023 and 2024.

Of their three-player Class of 2023, Parker Strauss transferred out to UC Riverside after last season, Jordan Clayton is redshirting this season and Blake Barkley has struggled with an early injury but likely would be out of the rotation when healthy.

The Wildcats got two players in their Class of 2024, KJ Windham and Angelo Ciaravino, as guards who have contributed right away. But with five seniors graduating, they needed a swath of high school talent to replenish the program's depth and future.

They project to have that in spades in their five-member Class of 2025 made up of guards Jake West and Phoenix Gill, wing Tre Singleton, power forward Tyler Kropp and big man Cade Bennerman.

"What we've talked about with how we can stay successful and high school recruitment, development, retention, is first and foremost, then we supplement through the portal with a Ryan Langborg or Jalen Leach," Collins said. "But we want the basis and heartbeat of the program to be guys who come here out of high school and get better.

"You look at that with Nick and Brooks... As a freshman, Brooks played 11 games, I think Nick was a bit player for us, didn't do much. Now, as veterans, they're 20-point-per-game scorers, All-American or all-conference level players and that's what our program has done."

With five seniors this season, Collins and his staff knew this was going to be a bigger recruiting class than most. But he was still quite pleased to end up with five commits for the first time in more than a decade, leading to a class that some services rank in the Top 10 in the country.

"I don't think we [preset] that we needed to get five, but we knew it needed to be a bigger class," he said. "Then with the way it lined up with guys that fit what we were about, the positional need, it ended up being five guys that we felt great about taking.

"And that still puts in a position this spring to add with veterans, too. We're in a good spot but it's still about locking into this year but spring will be here before we know it."