Northwestern Men's Basketball Whiffs on Top Transfer Target
In this story:
The Wildcats are adding a top sharpshooting target!
Unfortunately, it's not our Northwestern Wildcats.
Cornell graduate transfer guard Jake Fiegen's agent German Srulovich informs Jon Chepkevich of DraftExpress that the First Team All-Ivy League honoree will suit up for Kevin Willard's Villanova Wildcats in the fall.
Chris Collins' Northwestern Wildcats had also been in hot pursuit of the 3-point marksman.
Fiegen, a 6-foot-4 New Trier product, enjoyed a breakout 2025-26 junior with the Cornell Big Red. Across 24 healthy games (17 starts), Fiegen averaged 17.1 points on .546/.414/.772 shooting splits, 5.1 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 0.9 steals a night.
And that 41.4 percent shooting from beyond the arc arrived on a robust 5.5 triple tries. Across his encouraging NCAA career thus far, Fiegen has nailed 37.6 percent of his 4.2 3-point attempts per game.
Losing out on Feigen represents a major miss for Collins, who's looking to totally rebuild his roster after losing senior leading scorer Nick Martinelli, a two-time All-Big Ten Teamer and one of the most prolific scorers in Division I college basketball last year, to the pros. Additionally, a whopping nine Northwesterm players with remaining collegiate eligibility departed via the NCAA transfer portal this spring.
The Wildcats finished with a disappointing 15-19 record in 2025-26, missing the Big Dance.
According to Dylan Johnson of The Villanovan, Fiegen went with the Philadelphia-based program ahead of Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Virginia. As Johnson notes, a lot of Ivy League players explore other programs for a graduate season of eligibility. University of Pennsylvania alum Ethan Roberts recently hopped over to Notre Dame, speaking of. The transfer portal closed on April 21.
Oregon transfer forward Kwame Evans Jr. and Ohio State transfer forward Devin Royal also have hopped over to Villanova this offseason.
(Villanova) Wildcats guards Chris Jeffrey and Malachi Palmer have opted to transfer out of the program.
Ultimately, this decision may just come down to program prestige, upside and NIL coin. It's still disappointing that someone who grew up in the North Shore suburbs inches away from Northwestern opted to venture elsewhere rather than going for the homecoming approach.
So where will the Wildcats find their next Nick Martinelli? Time will tell. But Chris Collins will have to pull off a heck of a coaching job in 2026-27.
_________________________________
More from Northwestern On SI
_________________________________
Stay up to date on the Wildcats by bookmarking our site Northwestern On SI and following us on our Twitter page.
Add us as a preferred source on Google
An Evanston native, Alex Kirschenbaum is also a proud Northwestern alum. He has written for Bleacher Nation, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Hoops Rumors, Trailers From Hell, Men's Journal, and Bulls fan sites Blog-A-Bull and Pippen Ain't Easy, among others. Alex knows Zach Collins has given the Bulls some good years, but he'll never forgive the then-Gonzaga center for that very obvious goaltend against the Wildcats during the second round of the 2017 NCAA Tournament.