To get ready for the upcoming Arizona football season, All Sports Tucson offers a countdown, which will include history notes and a look ahead to the season — a good way to keep Arizona football on the mind in the summer months leading up to fall camp in early August and then kickoff against New Mexico on Aug. 31 in the start of the Brent Brennan era.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS PREVIOUS DAYS IN THE COUNTDOWN
A LOOK BACK — NO. 50 JULIUS HOLT
With it being the 50th day until kickoff between the Lobos and Wildcats, the most inspirational player to wear No. 50 for Arizona is defensive tackle Julius Holt, who played with the Wildcats in 1981 and 1982 after transferring from Ellsworth Junior College in Iowa Falls, Iowa. Holt became the president of the Tucson Youth Football and Spirit Federation in 2013, an organization he viewed as being much like the Boys and Girls Club back where he is from in Washington, D.C. Julius also worked as a high school counselor and program coordinator for middle school sports at Tucson Unified School District and was an academic counsler for athletes at Arizona. He was inducted in the American Youth Football Hall of Fame in 2020. He earned junior college All-American honors at Ellsworth his sophomore season in 1980. That’s when Arizona entered the picture as well as Michigan State, Minnesota, Louisville, Iowa and Nebraska. Tulane, coached by Smith at the time, started recruiting Holt when he was a freshman at Ellsworth. When Smith became Arizona’s coach in 1980, he assigned offensive line coach Mike Barry to recruit him. Why was an offensive line coach recruiting a defensive lineman/linebacker? “Coach Smith sweared up and down that if I would have redshirted my first year (in 1981) and moved to guard on the offensive line, I would have played 10 years in the NFL,” said Holt, who was 6-3 and 263 pounds during his Arizona career. He purposely asked for a linebacker uniform number of 50 with a strong desire to play outside linebacker for the Wildcats. Within the first two weeks of practice, Smith shifted him to defensive tackle. Holt tried to leave Tucson because the coaches did not place him at linebacker. Barry rushed to the airport to prevent him from leaving. Tucson and Arizona grew on him. In his two seasons on the D-line, Holt compiled 135 total tackles. He was in the iconic Tucson Citizen photo of him celebrating on the sidelines in the waning seconds of Arizona’s upset of No. 1 USC and Marcus Allen in 1981. He became the first in his family to earn a college degree in 1983 — a bachelors in Business and Public Administration. He met his wife Lisa at Arizona. He became a positive influence for many athletes in different sports. Holt was stricken with pneumonia and passed away at 60 years old in April 2022 after being hospitalized. Two other top players to wear No. 50 for Arizona: Centers Paul Hatcher (1954-56) and Bill Nemeth (1966-67). Hatcher was a two-time All-Border Conference and is a member Arizona’s Hall of Fame. Nemeth was All-WAC in 1966, All-Academic in 1967 and graduated from Arizona’s medical school.
NO. 50 IN 2024 — OG SHANCCO “ISE” MATAUTIA
Matautia, 6-foot-2 and 346 pounds, joins fellow Anaheim (Calif.) Servite High School alums Noah Fifita, Tetairoa McMillan and Jacob Manu with the Wildcats after spending his first three seasons in college at New Mexico. Matautia entered the transfer portal after last season and attended Arizona State for a semester before hitting the transfer portal again in April. He started in 11 of 12 games last season for the Lobos, coached by Danny Gonzales, who is now the Arizona linebackers and special teams coach. Matautia started 20 games in his three years with the Lobos. As a true freshman in 2020, he played in only four games, starting two, to keep his redshirt status.
NOTE
Highest Rated Offensive Tackles in EA College Football 25 pic.twitter.com/ugOzAfMZ5f
— PFF College (@PFF_College) July 11, 2024
Arizona junior offensive tackle Jonah Savaiinaea is tied for the fourth-highest rating among offensive tackles in the EA College Football 25 video games. He started all 13 games last year during his second season with the Wildcats. He finished second on the team with an overall blocking grade (69.7 per Pro Football Focus) and was third with 81.7 run-blocking grade. He allowed only two sacks in 889 snaps.
THEY SAID IT
“(Linebacker Justin) Flowe is doing great. He had a great spring. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to continue to watch him to develop and grow like all of our players because obviously we have an incredible player at that position, at one of those inside linebacker spots, in Jacob Manu. It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch that battle out during the fall because Jacob is what I would consider one of the unquestioned leaders of our football team, let alone our defense, and he was also an All-Conference player a year ago.So there’s going to be a lot of fun at that linebacker position. Coach Gonzales is obviously a vet and one of the better coaches in the country, so I’m excited for him to be able to coach those guys and continue to develop that group.” — Brennan about Flowe, Manu and the linebacker group that includes Stanford transfer Lance Kenely, San Jose State transfer Tre Smith (also a defensive end) and returner Sterling Lane II.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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