The 2016 season hasn’t been without its lumps for the Northwestern men’s basketball team, especially health-wise. The Wildcats lost Rapolas Ivanauskas for the season before a single game had been played, lost Aaron Falzon for the season shortly after that, and lost Dererk Pardon for a considerable portion and perhaps even more as the Wildcats open Big Ten play.
When completely healthy to start the year, Chris Collins mainly stuck to an eight-man rotation that featured Gavin Skelly, Isiah Brown and Nate Taphorn off the bench. This rotation had been so effective that Chris Collins inserted freshman Barret Benson into Pardon’s starting spot when he went down with an injury, rather than starting Skelly.