Arizona reportedly adding pair of starters from 2025 team ahead of Week 2 showdown vs. No. 15 BYU, thanks to TRO

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Arizona can start to build a convincing case as a Big 12 dark horse on Saturday in Provo, Utah, where it will take on No. 15 BYU. Aiming for a Week 2 upset, the Wildcats will reportedly have two familiar faces joining them on that quest.

The team is formally adding running back Ismail Mahdi and linebacker Max Harris — both of whom were starters on Arizona’s 2025 squad — ahead of Saturday’s conference tilt, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported on Friday.

Mahdi, the team’s leading rusher a season ago, and Harris, the team’s third-leading tackler last go-around, have been cleared for competition and are part of the traveling roster, per Thamel.

They are part of a group of athletes who were recently granted a temporary restraining order against the NCAA in Pima County Superior Court. So was kicker/punter Sullivan Moon, a transfer whom Arizona also added to the roster, per Thamel. Moon, though, reportedly won’t be at BYU for Saturday’s game.

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Those three are among several athletes from the 2022 high school class who’ve sought a fifth year of eligibility in the wake of the NCAA adopting a age-based, five-year eligibility model.

That new system was designed to eliminate waivers and redshirts and prevent a logjam of athletes hovering around their mid-20s from taking up roster spots and thereby streamline eligibility rules. The NCAA had to draw a line in the sand somewhere and determined that anyone who exhausted their eligibility during the 2025-26 academic year wouldn’t be grandfathered in.

Since, a litany of lawsuits have followed, with a bunch of athletes who graduated high school in 2022 arguing against that exclusion and eyeing a return to the collegiate ranks for a fifth year.

The NCAA has won a stay in some of its eligibility cases, including a class action filed in federal court, where a Colorado judge had granted all players who were part of the 2022 high school class a fifth year of eligibility.

Even so, the local court relief athletes such as Mahdi, Harris and Moon have received does in fact make them eligible for now.

While the Big 12 has its own policy forbidding pro players from joining members of the conference, Arizona’s newest 2026 additions don’t fall into that bucket.

Mahdi piled up 859 rushing yards on 6.4 yards per carry last season. Against BYU in 2025, however, he finished with only 21 yards on seven rushing attempts in a 33-27 double-overtime defeat. Harris had seven tackles that day.

Despite a federal appeals court freezing the aforementioned federal ruling in Colorado, Arizona allowed Mahdi and Harristo continue to practice with the team as the athletic department monitored “the judicial process,” as reported by the Arizona Daily Star.

That said, neither of them participated in the Wildcats’ season-opening win over FCS Northern Arizona.