In Hawaii, he found players have also been kept from high-profile West Coast clubs because of a quirky club-ball residency rule in which players are typically allowed to play only for a club in their state or a bordering one\u00a0\u2014 and Hawaii borders only an ocean. So Mandaquit said he and other locals started their own \u201cSons of Hawaii\u201d club to play on the “MADE Hoops” circuit.<\/p>\n
It still wasn\u2019t enough. Utah was next.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt it was best to get out of Hawaii and chase this dream,\u201d Mandaquit said. \u201cIt wasn’t an easy choice to leave home, but we felt looking at the big picture, if I want to play at the high Division I level, we almost felt that it was a necessity to get out of the islands, surround myself with better competition, be somewhere that allows me to be more exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n
That move paid off. Mandaquit grew into a high-major prospect at Utah Prep and became a mainstay with USA Basketball junior teams. He won three gold medals at FIBA events: At the 2023 U16 AmeriCup, the 2024 U17 World Cup and, on a team led by UA coach Tommy Lloyd, the 2025 U19 World Cup.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New Arizona guard JJ Mandaquit, shown playing for USA against France in the U19 World Cup last summer in Switzerland, headed to Washington last season but is now reuniting with UA coach Tommy Lloyd, who coached the USA U19 team.<\/p>\n
FIBA<\/p>\n
Only a secondary recruiting target of Arizona\u2019s before he committed to Washington in November 2024, Mandaquit jumped out at Lloyd while playing for USA Basketball last summer. Mandaquit averaged 6.1 points and 5.4 assists\u00a0\u2014 with nearly a 4-to-1 assist-turnover ratio\u00a0\u2014 while hitting 6 of 10 3-pointers over USA’s seven-game romp.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had only seen him play a few times before (last summer), but I was just so impressed with his character, but also his tenacity and the effort he played with. Just how he impacted winning,\u201d Lloyd said. \u201cSo obviously, when we saw his name on the transfer portal, it piqued my interest right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd said he considered Mandaquit out of high school, but the Wildcats were also pursuing Brayden Burries and had Jaden Bradley projected to stay through last season. Lloyd said he also took a cautious recruiting approach in 2025 because \u201cyou just didn\u2019t know\u201d how rev-share and NIL were going to work out, since 2025-26 was the first year schools could pay players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Hawaii, he found players have also been kept from high-profile West Coast clubs because of a quirky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,244,85,277618,373615],"class_list":["post-794002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-hawaii","tag-sports","tag-tommy-lloyd","tag-uconn-huskies-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}