EVANSTON, Ill. - Freshman guard KJ Windham tied his career high with 20 points as Northwestern knocked off Iowa, 68-57, on Friday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena and got revenge for their buzzer-beater loss to the Hawkeyes back in December.

Big Ten scoring leader overcame a slow start to score 16 points as the Wildcats led from wire-to-wire. It was the Wildcats' third straight double-digit, Big Ten win and it lifted them into a tie for 12th in the conference standings at 7-11.

"I can't say enough about our group," head coach Chris Collins said. "I've been proud of a lot of teams for a lot of different reasons, but I'm not sure I've been more proud of a team than I am of this one right now."

The Hawkeyes struggled offensively, shooting an anemic 36% on the game and were held to a season-low in points. Drew Thelwell was their leading scorer with 14 points, doing his damage almost exclusively beyond the arc with four 3s.

"This was a team win tonight," Collins said. "The defense carried the day but a lot of guys stepped up and made plays when we needed them."

Here are our takeaways from a win over Iowa that Northwestern made look routine and raised their record to 16-13 overall.

Windham is the real deal: Northwestern and Collins have been defined by their star guards over the last decade and Windham might be the heir apparent. Since Jalen Leach went down with a season-ending torn ACL against USC on Feb. 4, Windham has scored 15+ points in three of the six games.

"It's been really fun to see his growth over the past couple weeks," Collins said. "It's hard playing at this level and we hold our guys accountable for a lot of things and his head was spinning...

"I talked to him about these last eight games [of the season after the USC game], about trying to be more free of mind. He's going to make freshman mistakes but get him a little more instinctive, more in attack mode."

He's averaging 10.5 points in that same stretch and has shifted from a combo guard or a streaky shooter to a reliable ballhandler and offensive initiator.

"He's never really been a true point guard, he's been more off-ball, combo guard... These last couple games, he's been terrific," Collins added.

When Windham broke out the ice-in-the-veins celebration made popular nationally by D'Angelo Russell and brought to Northwestern by Boo Buie, the comparisons were too overwhelming to avoid for Northwestern's social media team.

Windham disclosed he's been doing that celebration since his junior year of high school but was equally quick to credit the program legend before him.

"He definitely paved the way," Windham said. "He's an all-time guard here and watching him last year, it made me want to be out there... It made me excited to come here."

Martinelli, sitting across from him at the press conference, cracked up at the freshman's attempt to pay homage to his role model.

"He loves Boo," the forward interjected with another laugh.

There are still many, many roads to cross and skills to hone before a Buie comparison holds any weight, but Collins said he hopes Windham is the next in line. The young guard has put together a very strong resume down the stretch and totally flipped the script on his season, from being nearly out of the rotation to penciled in as a starter in 2025-26.

Stars didn't shine early: Martinelli poured it on late with 12 of his 16 points in the second half and eight of them in the final 4:43. But it was still an off night for the Big Ten scoring leader, as he hit just five of his 14 shots.

"You know they're going to him late and he's a tremendous late game player," Iowa head coach Fran McCaffrey said. "Possessions start really well and he'll just keep working... I think everyone that plays them is going to be locked in on him and Ty [Berry] right now, though Windham is coming up big lately for them so I want to give him credit for that."

Martinelli came on late but Iowa star Payton Sandfort never found his footing, finishing with nine points on 3-for-13 shooting overall, and 0-for-4 from 3-point range.

"It changes a lot," McCaffery said about when Sandfort struggles. "We don't have a lot going on in the post... I thought he was forcing it a little bit too much and he can do that and get it going, so I let him go. But he felt really bad because he felt he took some bad shots."

It was a jarring turn after watching Martinelli and Minnesota's Dawson Garcia went toe-to-toe in a heavyweight scoring bout in the Twin Cities last week, with Martinelli scoring 29 and Garcia 26. This game came down to the supporting casts, and Northwestern's was flat-out better. The Wildcats outscored the Hawkeyes 28-18 off the bench, just one point off the game's final margin.

Collins becomes second-winningest coach in NU history: Collins moved into second place in the Northwestern record books with this victory, his 192nd overall, tying his predecessor, Bill Carmody.

"It means I'm old," he quipped when asked about what the accomplishment means.

The veteran coach quickly turned reflective, though.

"This is a place that hasn't had a lot of [coaching] turnover, which I respect. That's one of the reasons I was attracted to come here because I knew it would take a little time," he said. "To be here for 12 years, you look at the history and I see coaches like Tex Winter, in the Hall of Fame, Bill Foster, Kevin O'Neill, Bill Carmody was a magnificent coach."

The full accounting will be taken after the season of what Collins has accomplished this season and he's very complimentary of his predecessors. Still, he remains the only coach at Northwestern since 1950 with an above .500 coaching record and, of course, the only one to get the Wildcats to the NCAA Tournament, which he's done three times.

Collins was equally quick to celebrate his players.

"When you coach, you don't play. Coaching records are all about players, the guys who have put the jersey on for me," he said. "Being second isn't a record but I hope they take part in it because I don't get any of it if they're not fighting their tails off."

Wildcats solidified Big Ten Tournament berth: Northwestern's season seemed dead in the water at 13-13 (4-11 Big Ten) after a loss to Nebraska on Feb. 16, but they have since rattled off three straight wins by 10+ points to resurrect their season.

"A lot of teams would have went on Spring Break for the last five games," Collins said. "Our guys have continued to practice hard... I kept hearing from Nick and Ty and Matt [Nicholson] that we're going to find a way to have a winning season."

With this win, the team's 16th, that goal is fulfilled. With two games remaining, Northwestern will finish the season at least above .500. They have leapt from 17th in the conference to tied with Rutgers for 12th. They don't have the tiebreaker over the Scarlet Knights, but they do on 14th Minnesota, 15th USC and almost assuredly over 16th-place Iowa should they lose to Michigan State next week.

The Wildcats will keep fighting, even as they face two of the league's premier teams in UCLA and Maryland in their last pair of the campaign. But they have put themselves in the driver's seat to stay above the 15-team cut-off line for a trip to Indianapolis.

It's been a very impressive stretch that has refused to let this season become a sob story, pushing past adversity to rediscover success and deliver three straight serious statements.

Should they pull off a Senior Night-fueled upset of UCLA, some conversations about another NCAA Tournament bid could be resurrected, but, for now, they should celebrate the culture that has been clearly set by this team.