Grace Sullivan is among Northwestern’s transfers aiming to help turn things around

But right now, she’s a junior at Northwestern, spending her first season in Evanston after two years playing in the Patriot League at Bucknell. She is 6’4, loves a turnaround jump shot as much as anyone and hopes to be a key pillar in Northwestern’s rebuild.

The latter won’t be easy. The Wildcats entered the 2024-25 season coming off of consecutive 9-21 campaigns. They’re now three seasons removed from their last winning record and four from their last NCAA Tournament appearance.

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The road so far hasn’t been the smoothest. Northwestern opened the season with losses to Illinois State (ranked 136th in the NET) and Lehigh (95th). But after allowing 166 points across those two games, the defense has stiffened and the team has won four of its last five games, including a major come-from-behind victory over Utah (25th). The lone loss in that span came to Harvard (36th).

In a loaded Big Ten that currently has half of its 18 teams ranked in the top 25, it’ll be an uphill battle. Sullivan, though, is ready to lead the charge.

“I think the biggest thing is, she’s a great kid,” Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown told The Next. “She has fit right in with our team, has this incredible attitude and work ethic and [is] very humble, just goes about her business.

“I feel like she’s been here as long as these other guys. She’s just blended in so well.”

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In seven games, Sullivan is tied with fellow transfer Taylor Williams in leading the team in scoring at 12.3 points per game. Her 57.4% field goal percentage puts her in the 95th percentile nationally, and her 2.3 offensive rebounds per game rank in the 91st percentile, per Her Hoop Stats. (Williams is in the 97th percentile with 3.3 offensive boards per game.) Sullivan has yet to face the most daunting competition on the schedule, but there’s a clear sense that she belongs at this level.

“She plays so hard; she runs the floor hard,” McKeown said. “In the Big Ten, you’ve got to find ways to score, and she’s going to get guarded on the blocks, but her ability to run will free her up, too.”

In her freshman season as a Bison, Sullivan averaged 3.3 points in 11.7 minutes per game. During the first chunk of her sophomore year, her playing time ticked up, but her scoring numbers were still in single digits. Then in February, something changed. In eight of her final 10 games, she scored at least 10 points. As a Wildcat, she’s continued that trend, scoring in double figures in five of seven games so far.

“My old teammates and I, we laughed about this at the time because it was just like a click. It was very different,” Sullivan told The Next about her growth as a sophomore. “It was just seeing in my mind what I’m capable of. I can [score in] the midrange, I can get down in the post, I can get rebounds. I’m bigger and stronger than a lot of these girls that I’m going up against.”

In hindsight, she attributes that “click” to a saying repeated over and over by Sherill Baker, her former assistant coach: “Stay woke.”

“Be ready for anything, be the aggressor, go at the other team,” Sullivan said. “Don’t take the first punch, throw the first punch. … That has definitely stuck with me for sure.”

If you ever find yourself competing in a game of very niche women’s college basketball trivia, there’s a chance Sullivan might come up as an answer: She’s the first non-graduate transfer into McKeown’s program since the start of the transfer portal/NIL era.

It’s a reflection, of course, of the pace of change in the sport. The altered environment has created a direct tension with the philosophy that guided McKeown’s sustained success in Evanston — recruit well and develop. It’s how the Wildcats reached the NCAA Tournament in 2015 and 2021, and how they finished 26-4 and won the Big Ten in 2019-20. With Northwestern’s stringent academic requirements, undergraduate transfers are quite challenging to pull off.

Whether Sullivan will be the first in a new trend is unclear. What is clear, however, is that she’s one of three transfers on this year’s Wildcats, along with Williams (from Michigan) and Kyla Jones (from Brown), who will all play key roles this season.

Sullivan and Williams have formed a strong duo in the post, while Jones has brought scoring ability to the guard position. Along with returners Caileigh Walsh, Melannie Daley, Casey Harter and Caroline Lau, there’s a clear core of more experienced players. The big question: Can they all mesh and be consistent?

It’s something Sullivan noted as well — that they’ve shown flashes at times but also painful reminders that it’s a team with seven new players still getting to know each other’s tendencies.

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But when the team’s at its best, she said, one thing stands out above all: It shares the ball.

“[Associate head coach Tangela Smith] emphasizes a lot: When you don’t care who gets the credit, that’s when everyone becomes successful,” Sullivan said. “When no one really cares who gets the credit or who scores the most points, who gets the most rebounds, that’s when everyone comes together the best, and that’s when we experience the most success.”

The data somewhat supports that theory. The Wildcats rank No. 1 in the nation, out of 362 programs, in assisted shot rate at 74%. But that’s not the be-all and end-all statistic. Last season, they were second in that metric and still won just nine games.

While it’s an indicator of sharing the ball, it’s also seemingly an indicator that there’s a lack of shot creation. Since the graduations of standout guards Lindsey Pulliam and Veronica Burton, Northwestern has struggled to find players who can consistently create scoring opportunities for themselves, making it hard to compete against high-flying offenses like Iowa and Ohio State.

Sullivan’s hopeful that her experience, combined with that of Williams and Jones, helps reverse that trend.

“The game kind of slows down in your mind the older you get, so you see little things that you didn’t necessarily see as a freshman,” she said. “Our experience, just coming from three totally different teams, we’re bringing in three different ideas as to how practices should go, games should go. Those three different opinions coming together to meld as one, that’s been really helpful so far, and it’s been really cool to see where our different experiences have brought us.”

Their first Big Ten challenge will come on Sunday in Ann Arbor. A Michigan team that might be lighter on experience but has quite a bit of young talent will test what kind of team the 2024-25 Northwestern Wildcats can be.

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