Just when walk-on guard Addison Arnold was stepping away from the Arizona men’s basketball team for a Latter-day Saints mission after the 2021-22 season, then-first-year UA coach Tommy Lloyd was making a vow.
After the Wildcats' dispiriting loss to Houston in the 2022 Sweet 16, a game in which Lloyd once said Cougars coach “Kelvin Sampson kicked our butts wearing sweats,” Lloyd said he would build more toughness into his program via both recruiting and coaching.
Two years later, after serving out his mission in Argentina, Arnold returned to see the difference.
Arizona men's basketball had moved from the Pac-12 to the more rugged Big 12 in 2024-25 but still overcame some early-season struggles to finish in a third-place tie and play competitively with Houston in the conference tournament final.
Then, this season, the real breakthrough: The Wildcats became known for size, skills and toughness, preferring to pound their opponents by getting to or dominating around the basket so much so that they barely shoot 3-pointers sometimes.
“I definitely sense it,” Arnold said. “My first year (2021-22), I don't know if we played a team like Houston that whole year. This year it's a little different, being in the Big 12, but it's also his non-conference scheduling, making sure we're playing the best teams, seeing different teams and different looks.”
The Wildcats began this season by facing defending national champion Florida, winning by six on a semi-neutral court in Las Vegas. Then victories in Los Angeles against UCLA, and at UConn, which has joined them in the Final Four.
Wins over Alabama, Auburn, San Diego State and throughout the first half of Big 12 play put the Wildcats at 23-0 before their only two losses of the season happened.
They were plowing over, and past people.
“I feel pretty comfortable that we've seen the toughest teams and the best teams, the most athletic teams,” Arnold said. “The first year we were playing really good teams, as well, but the Pac-12 and the Big 12 are really different in that sense and there’s also what we're doing internally to making sure we're tough.”
While Arnold said he was preparing to play a spot role if needed when the Wildcats were without forwards Koa Peat and Dwayne Aristode in late February, Arizona instead relied more heavily on forwards Ivan Kharchenkov, Tobe Awaka and Anthony Dell'Orso while beating Houston and Baylor without them.
But Arnold is often the Wildcats' first walk-on off the bench, having logged 44 minutes over 19 games so far this season, while Lloyd said he’s played a key role behind the scenes.
Arizona guard Addison Arnold dribbles toward the net against Oklahoma State guard Ryan Crotty during a game at McKale Center, Feb. 7, 2026.
“Addison has contagious energy,” Lloyd said. “He’s a servant of the program and he brings a positivity every day to work. On top of that, he's a good basketball player. He really pushes our guys in practice and he takes his role seriously. He's really professional.”
As an all-league pick at Royal High School in Simi Valley (Calif.), Arnold said he had some interest from low-major schools but that it was complicated. Arnold had already been dealing with ankle injuries so severe that the Simi Valley Acorn once called him the “Comeback Player of the Century,” and he said he wasn’t sure when he’d take his Latter-day Saints mission.
Plus, it was COVID, making it difficult for anybody to evaluate him anyway. Most of his senior season in 2020-21 was canceled, and Arnold said he picked up some interest by playing in a Grind Session tournament, but “nothing worthwhile” came of schools' interest.
But he had been talking to Gonzaga coaches Mark Few and Tommy Lloyd during COVID about possibly walking on to the Zags program. Arnold’s father, former USC assistant and Hawaii head coach Gib Arnold, had known Lloyd since Addison said they were “both young guns recruiting in Europe together for separate schools.”
So when Lloyd took over at Arizona as COVID restrictions were easing in April 2021, Addison opted to join the Wildcats.
“I wouldn't say I got screwed over (in recruiting), but it was a little more difficult that time,” Arnold said. “I ended up just taking the walk-on spot here at Arizona, and I loved it.”
Arizona guard Anthony Dell'Orso, left, dribbles against guard Addison Arnold during a partially-open practice at Richard Jefferson Gymnasium, Aug. 12, 2025.
Arnold sat out the 2021-22 season as a redshirt and said it helped him athletically to go on his mission to Argentina in 2022-23 and 2023-24 because it allowed old injuries to fully heal. He also managed to work off some rust once in a while.
“I spent a nine months in one area where the only indoor basketball gym was in the mission I was at,” Arnold said. “Obviously it’s not your main goal but I was able to take advantage of it.”
After he returned to Arizona in fall 2024, Arnold went on to play in 11 games last season and, in a different way, demonstrated some toughness during the Red-Blue Showcase before this season.
During the event's dunk contest, Arnold took a snap from Rob Gronkowski, backed up as if he was searching for a receiving target, then jumped over the former NFL standout to dunk the football.
Judges gave him a unanimous 10.
It wasn't extensively planned. Arnold said he connected with Gronkowski through a friend who happened to be Gronk's manager, and eventually secured a brief conversation to discuss the possibility.
Arizona guard Addison Arnold leaps over former Wildcat tight end Rob Gronkowski on his attempt in the dunk contest during the annual Red-Blue Showcase, Oct. 3, 2025, in Tucson.
“I think at first he (asked his manager), 'You sure this kid can jump over me?'" Arnold said. “Then I FaceTimed him, and he was like, 'Whatever. I'll do it.' He's funny. He was down.
“I just told him real quick what I was going to do. He was going to snap it me, and I was going to jump over him. Luckily, he rose to the occasion, and it worked out well.”
Because he redshirted in 2021-22 and went on his two-year mission, Arnold still has two more seasons of eligibility to play. He said he plans to remain with the Wildcats next season and graduate from UA, then play at a lower-level program for his final season in 2027-28.
Meanwhile, Arnold said he’s absorbing what he can from Lloyd and his staff, planning to follow some family footsteps: Gib Arnold is now a performance coach at Washington, while Gib’s father, Frank, was once the BYU head coach and an assistant for John Wooden at UCLA.
Lloyd said Arnold is “off to a good start” if he wants to be a coach someday, and Arnold said that’s his long-term plan.
“I've got a long lineage of coaches in my family, so I've always wanted to be a coach,” Arnold said. “For a second I was thinking about being an agent, but Tommy talked me out of that one. Some of the coaches think coaching is a better business, and I think it’s in my blood.”
