Arizona didn’t lose the Big 12 Player of the Year and an NBA lottery pick, then magically expect the next two guards to walk in wearing the same labels.
That’s not how this works. But the Wildcats do believe the group they’ve assembled can stack up in a different way.
Arizona brought in four backcourt additions this offseason - transfers Derek Dixon and JJ Mandaquit, plus freshmen Cameron Holmes and Caleb Holt - and at least two of them are expected to start alongside returners Ivan Kharchenkov and Motiejus Krivas, with late pickup RJ Godfrey also likely in the mix. The first real look at how that all fits together comes next week, when Arizona plays three international teams in Lithuania.
For Holmes, the trip means more than basketball.
“This is my first time, a lot of ours’ first time being out of the country,” Holmes said Tuesday. “I know it’s going to be a great trip, though. Great bonding time, we’ll create chemistry within the team.”
Holmes, a 6-foot-6 guard from Goodyear, was the first of the newcomers to commit. The 4-star prospect and younger brother of 2024 NBA 1 st round pick DaRon Holmes signed in November, when Arizona’s 2025-26 team was still only a few games into its Final Four run.
Then the rest of the guard group came together in stages. Right before the Big 12 Tournament in March, Arizona landed the 6-foot-5 Holmes, who 247Sports ranked as the No. 2 player in the 2026 class. After the NCAA transfer portal opened in April, the Wildcats added Mandaquit from Washington and Dixon from North Carolina, both freshmen who flashed enough to make Arizona bet on their upside.
Dixon arrived after a season at UNC in which he averaged 6.5 points, 2.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 22.3 minutes per game, while shooting 39.7 percent from 3. Mandaquit played in 22 games for Washington, starting six, and posted 5.2 points and 3.2 assists per game.
Dixon also fits into a familiar Arizona-North Carolina pipeline that began with Caleb Love. Last season, he was at UNC with former UA big man Henri Veesaar, and Veesaar’s feedback mattered when Dixon was weighing his options.
“I had a lot of conversations with Henri,” Dixon said. “He spent a lot of time here, he’d been through the ups and downs of it.
Redshirted, been injured, been not playing much, and he’s seen both sides of it, so he was very honest with me about the program. But he thought it was going to be a great fit for me.
He was excited when I was coming here.”
Dixon returned the favor once he heard Arizona was pursuing Godfrey for the final roster spot. Godfrey and Dixon crossed paths twice last season when Dixon was at UNC and Godfrey was at Clemson.
“He was really good when he played against us, and when (Arizona) told me he was thinking about coming here, I reached out to him and said I think this would be a great fit for you,” Dixon said. “He’s a really good player, and I’m excited to be playing with him, not against him this year.”
Godfrey’s arrival appears to have altered the path for Holmes, who said he initially started working out at the 3 but has since spent time at multiple spots during summer practices.
“RJ is going to come in and just be a great piece for us,” Holmes said. “He’s a great guy on and off the court, just seeing how seriously he takes the game, I can learn from it. Whether that’s starting, whether that’s coming off the bench, just my main focus is just to come and impact the game as much as possible.”
In Other News...
Arizona Has A Roster Fans Can Finally Dream Big About
Arizona football heads into this season with a roster that, at least on paper, looks like one of the better ones in the Big 12. Much of that optimism comes from how well Arizona has handled both retention and recruitment, keeping key pieces in place while also adding through the transfer portal. Analyst Justin McIllice pointed to the Wildcats portal standing and the amount of returning talent as major reasons the outlook around the program has brightened.
Noah Fifita gives Arizona a proven presence at quarterback, and the rest of the depth chart looks more balanced than it has in recent years. There is enough talent across multiple positions to make people around the program think this team can at minimum hold its ground, and maybe even push beyond what it showed before. The real question now is whether all of that promise translates once the season starts and the Wildcats have to prove this roster can live up to the buzz. [Read more 🡒]