On Northwestern’s first possession Friday night, the ball was touched eight times. Five of those touches came from the Wildcats’ backcourt.
Jake West got his hands on it twice, while Pratt touched it three times, capping the possession by turning the final touch into Northwestern’s first bucket of the night with a spinning drive and right-handed finish.
On Northwestern’s next possession, Pratt, overplayed by his defender, cut backdoor and made another right-handed layup off an Okku Federiko bounce
pass. Just over thirty seconds later, West got open on the perimeter and splashed his first shot attempt of the night: a three-pointer from the right wing.
The ‘Cats’ backcourt stayed sizzling hot all night, en route to NU’s 78-65 victory over Stony Brook.
West finished with a career-high 23 points, off of 8-for-17 field goal shooting and 4-for-9 three-point shooting, while adding six assists and three rebounds. Alongside him, Pratt had 16 points, becoming the first Northwestern newcomer to score 15+ points in the first two games of a season since Chase Audige in 2020, per Northwestern Athletics. The shooting guard shot 5-for-11 from the floor and 2-for-4 from deep, while also notching six rebounds.
“I thought our guards were terrific in the game,” said NU head coach Chris Collins in his postgame presser, while putting on his glasses to look down at a box-score printout. “39 points, nine rebounds, eight assists and only two turnovers. Out of your two guards. You get that kind of guard play, you’re gonna have a chance.”
Combining for 39 points in each of NU’s first two games, the West-Pratt backcourt duo has notched 78 points in the ‘Cats’ opening two games, the most by a Northwestern backcourt duo in the first two games of a season since at least 1999 — which is the last year for which Northwestern’s website has game-by-game recaps available for viewing.
And the stats aren’t flukes. West and Pratt pass the eye test, too, and kept the Welsh-Ryan Arena crowd captivated all night with dynamic ball-handling, shifty spin moves and step-back jump shots. The guards showed off their ability to score at all three levels, while giving each other more free space to operate in the process.
“I think you saw some of tonight kind of what I envisioned when we knew Jake was coming back,” said Collins about the backcourt duo. “I wanted to pair him up with another dynamic guard who could not only score the ball — we needed a scorer — but someone who could play with the ball.”
Last year, Collins didn’t solidify a backcourt pairing until late in the season. Throughout the year, guards Jayden Reid, Jordan Clayton, Justin Mullins, Max Green and Jake West took turns starting, as Collins fiddled with guard combos up until the last four games of the season, when he rolled with West and Reid.
On April 6, both Reid and Clayton entered the transfer portal. 15 days later, Green jumped ship with them. In June, Mullins graduated. While Collins knew West was coming back, there was no clear choice of who could step into the starting two-guard role.
However, while the outflow of transfers created an unknown in Northwestern’s backcourt, it gave Collins the opportunity to find a player that he felt would be able to fill team-wide holes and perfectly complement NU’s returning point guard, West, on offense. The player he found was LA Pratt — a rising fifth-year senior recovering from a broken foot, which abruptly ended what had been a 17.0 points per game senior campaign.
For much of the summer, there was uncertainty surrounding what Pratt would bring to the table, making the jump to the high-major level for the first time in his career while coming off a season-ending foot injury.
“He’s coming off a big leg injury, you know, so the first couple exhibition games people could have been saying stuff,” said West in his postgame press conference. Pratt scored just nine points across NU’s two exhibition games, while shooting 2-for-18 from the field and 2-for-9 from beyond the arc.
But NU didn’t shy away from the Columbus native after his preseason woes. Rather, it responded by trying to find more ways to get him involved in the offense, with Collins noting Pratt’s ability to come off of ball screens as a playmaker and his 6-foot-5 size at the guard position as things Pratt brings to the table that he’s been especially excited about.
Now, with a system in place that stresses West and Pratt’s symbiotic playmaking, the duo is quickly becoming the keystone of Northwestern’s developing 2026-27 offensive system.
“[We tried] to put some things in offensively that really highlight the guys that we want to have the ball and make decisions,” said Collins. “We added some wrinkles to make sure that the ball is in Jake and LA’s hands in a lot of the stuff we run, so that those guys can not only score when they need to, but also find the decision makers and find our shooters and cutters and bigs.”
And Collins’ efforts to create opportunities for his backcourt haven’t gone unnoticed by the face of this Northwestern team: Jake West, who on Friday became the first Wildcat guard to notch 20+ points in both of the first two games of a season since Drew Crawford in 2010.
Looking primed for a major sophomore breakout season, West passed off a lot of the credit for his hot start to Collins and the Northwestern program as a whole, expressing how “happy” he was to still be in Evanston.
“Kudos to Coach Collins for believing in me my freshman year and letting me be out there because I think it’s really starting to pay off,” said West. “I’m able to see the game a lot better… being under the same system for two years, I’m starting to understand a lot more, knowing where I need to be and where to make plays.
The former Mr. Pennsylvania basketball guard also shared his coach’s sentiments about what Pratt brings to Northwestern’s offense. West emphasized that Pratt makes the ‘Cats more versatile, giving NU a secondary option it can lean on if he isn’t hitting his shots.
“I think these first two games have been great for him,” said West. “You’re seeing the LA that we see every single day.”
This might just be a dangerous backcourt duo Northwestern has stumbled upon this season. Potentially, one of the better offensive backcourts that this ‘Cats program has had in recent history.
But don’t get it twisted. No matter Northwestern’s 2-0 record and how good its backcourt has been through two games, Collins’ focus remains on all the work Northwestern still has to do on a game-by-game basis to build out its rotation and keep winning games.
“I’m not even thinking about the Big Ten right now,” said Collins when asked if he felt the ‘Cats’ current rotation could win games in the conference. “I’ve been telling our guys every single game [that] we just gotta focus on that game.”
“We gotta just keep improving,” he said. “We gotta keep getting better.”
