The dust has settled on Northwestern's 2024-25 campaign and although injuries lowered the team's once-promising ceiling to make a third straight NCAA Tournament, there is still much to celebrate.

The Wildcats' 17-16 campaign marked a third straight winning season, and the 76 wins from 2022-25 ties the record for the winningest three-season stretch in program history.

The Wildcats also won their opening game in the Big Ten Tournament, snapping a three-game losing streak in the conference's postseason.

At the same time, Northwestern finished just 7-13 in Big Ten play and suffered through more than their share of heartbreaking losses. Injuries to two of their top three scorers two-thirds of the way through the season seemed to be a death sentence, but somehow the Wildcats managed to find a way to compete and win more games than anyone expected.

WildcatReport weighs in with our awards from the bittersweet campaign.

MORE FROM WILDCATREPORT: 2024-25 Season Rewind

Northwestern's MVP is a shoo-in: Martinelli was the Big Ten's leading scorer this season and Northwestern's new record holder for most points and field goals made in a single season.

Head coach Chris Collins and Martinelli joked often down the stretch about how green the light was for him to shoot after starters Brooks Barnhizer and Jalen Leach were lost for the season. But it's still extraordinarily impressive how he handled the brunt of opposing team's scouting and defenses with barely a decrease in his production. In fact, with every team throwing the kitchen sink at him every night, he still scored 28+ points in three of the team's final six games.

The junior from Glenview (Ill.) Glenbrook South hit game-winning shots against Maryland and USC to cement his role the Wildcats' go-to buy in crunch time. And he was the driving engine of the team's recovery from the devastating injuries that would have sunk most teams but seemed to galvanize this one.

The Big Ten coaches and media may have voted him to the All-Big Ten Second Team, but he's WildcatReport's MVP.

Had Barnhizer finished a healthy season, he would have been the pick after averaging 2.3 steals and 1.1 blocks per game and running the ship on both ends of the floor. However, since his two-way tour de force was capped at 17 games due to injury, this honor goes to one of the defenders who stepped up in his absence: Justin Mullins.

Mullins was one of the players who stepped into the void left by Barnhizer's absence and played better than most expected him to. His minutes per game leapt from 5.2 last year to 22.2 this year, a more than four-fold increase. He was a tenacious perimeter defender and often drew the opponent's best offensive player.

Mullins' defensive stats aren't as eye-popping with a steal and 3.2 rebounds per game, and he had just seven blocks. But he got his hands on countless loose balls and errant passes.

There's a case to be made for center Matt Nicholson to win this award with his 1.4 blocks per game, but Mullins gets the nod here. At 6-foot-6 and 190 pounds, his length and athleticism were key to retaining the integrity of Northwestern's perimeter defense and harrying the legions of talented guards and wings in this league.

Leach is the latest transfer success story for the Wildcats at guard. Chase Audige from William & Mary spent three years at Northwestern and became one of the program's biggest stars. Ryan Langborg from Princeton helped fuel last year's NCAA run. And now, Leach from Fairfield ran the show until his season was ended by an unfortunate injury.

Leach struggled early in the season with the transition from the MAAC to Power Five competition. Teams like Dayton, Butler and Iowa really harried him early in the schedule, mitigating his scoring skills with physicality. But as the calendar turned, Leach adapted.

He finished the season averaging 14.3 points per game. He was the team's third-leading scorer and its leader in assists at 3.4 per game. His 78 assists still led the team even though he missed the last 10 games of the season.

Leach posted 19 points at Michigan on 8-for-12 shooting but was limited to 27 minutes thanks to a controversial ejection for incidental contact with center Vlad Goldin trying to get over a screen. He scored 23 points in two of his last three games, keeping the Wildcats competitive against Rutgers and Wisconsin. Then, as luck was have it, Leach tore his ACL on a drive to the basket in the Wildcats' win over USC on Feb. 4.

The other transfer this season, 7-footer Keenan Fitzmorris from Stony Brook, provided some electric moments off the bench, but this award goes to Leach in a landslide.

This pick is almost as easy as Martinelli's was, even for a freshman. Northwestern asks a lot of its players in Chris Lowery's intense defensive scheme, and it can be hard for first-year players to make headway in Collins' rotations. Windham got a trio of early-season starts while Barnhizer rehabbed his original foot injury and scored 10 points against Lehigh and nine against Dayton. But Barnhizer's return practically put Windham into hibernation for three months, and Collins didn't pull him back out until Leach went down.

But Windham came back as a new player. He scored in double-digits in six of the next nine games, including 20 at Oregon and against Iowa. He came to Northwestern as a combo guard from Indiana state champion Indianapolis Ben Davis but found his footing running the offense. He was practically orchestral in an eight-point, seven-assist game at Minnesota that was key for Northwestern's Big Ten Tournament bid.

After his clutch run to close the season, no one's future is brighter than Windham's, and he has all the makings of a sophomore starter.