Arizona Wildcats men's basketball

That's the real break.

Arizona can beat them.

Houston can beat them.

Arizona State could beat them.

But they play them all at home.

Which other team? There are a lot of teams that have three to four game schedules, Notre Dame being one of them, for example.

And look, the hope is that not all these are controversial.

BYU minus 7.5, we can start right there.

Dad's there.

Everybody in the recruiting world had this as an Arizona-Texas battle, right? I even got a text from someone who was just like, I'm so shocked.

I heard some people with NIL dealings that he was not going to be there, blah, blah, blah.

So he had the...

The Texas visit was going to be on the 19th.

Arizona was going to be on the 25th.

Three more officials in the books, which a lot of kids take these days because they're fun.

Let's just be honest, right? He didn't take them.

Jordan Smith at Arkansas, you can poke holes in.

Caleb Holt at Arizona, you could poke holes in.

Last year, I felt like there was maybe eight freshmen that were driving winning for awesome teams, right? You think of like Kingston Flemings at Houston, Keaton Wagler at Illinois, Cam Boozer at Duke, Darren Peterson at Kansas, Caleb Wilson at UNC, AJ DeBonse at BYU, like you go down the list.

This year, I kind of wonder if that's like one or two, but I'm curious if that changes, right? And it's a situation where someone surprised us yet again, just like they did last year.

You beat the eventual Big East champions.

You, you, you faced Arizona and Purdue and Houston, all teams that, that made it deep into the NCAA tournament.

And four out of five of those games went, went, went the other way.

One of them was a close loss in Birmingham, basically a home game to the Cougars.

The first few weeks of the season are still going to be a challenge.

Don't, don't get me wrong about that.

You host Arizona.

You potentially have to face a team like Kansas or Florida or Houston in Las Vegas at the Player's Era Eight.

And yes, we dip into our law degree bag today to talk about R.J. Godfrey's eligibility update.

It's a packed edition of the AZ Wildcats podcast starting right now.

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Welcome, welcome, welcome on in to the AZ Wildcats podcast coming to you live [laughs] from Studio K, presented by our friends over at Circle K. I am your host, Damon Ferrell, AKA Damon Dog.

That's my guy, Kevin Thomas, AKA the 2026 All-See Network Content Creator of the Year, AKA Kevo Posts.

And that was not my best Studio K live today.

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... food intake, what we need to do better for tomorrow's preparation.

The aforementioned Iowa Hawkeyes are in at number eight.

TCU is at number 13, Oklahoma State at 15, and Arizona State at 23.

Of those teams, Utah will get Oklahoma State and Arizona State in the Huntsman Center, and they will play TCU and Arizona State on the road, with Iowa, of course, being in the Bahamas.

Let's go over to the men's side for a small but not great recruiting update.

RJ Moore, a four-star guard who had Utah in his top six, committed to Rutgers over the opening weekend of college football.

I think Alec is really one of the X factor type players for this Utah team that will help determine how far this team can go.

So let's take a step back now and get to some Big 12 content.

Shortly after I recorded my last episode, Arizona State decided to release its non-conference schedule.

He's top three right up there with Alonzo Barnett down at UCF and then old friend in the state, Rocco Beck, who's obviously now at Penn State.

Noah Fafita at Arizona might be in that mix too.

But obviously a lot of Rainer's experiences at the group of five level from his three years starting at Arkansas State.

So yes, he is...

And, I mean, Jane Coon's an in-state kid, but that was still a really good win to kind of, you know, for him to decommit from Creighton and end up in Iowa City.

And then, you know, you get Keller Doherty, who – probably would have had, or definitely would have had more offers.

I mean, Kansas was poking around, Arizona was poking around.

To get someone like Daughtry too, I think that kind of sets a standard for, you know, kind of puts more eyes on the map because, or puts more eyes on Iowa.