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Latvian record holder Nikolass Deicmans has signed with Kentucky for the recruiting class of 2026.

Deicmans holds the Latvia national record in the 200 backstroke at 2:01.18 at the 2026 Lithuanian Championships, breaking his own record of 2:01.52 from the 2025 Lithuanian Championships.

He is also the Latvian record holder in the SCM event, swimming 1:53.47 earlier this month at the Latvian Championships to take three seconds off Uvis Kalnins‘ 2016 time of 1:56.07.

He has also represented Latvia internationally at a few different meets including the 2025 World Championships, where he swam the 100 and 200 backstroke, finishing 51st in the 100 (57.18), and 36th in the 200 (2:02.50).

Despite the new five-for-five eligibility rules taking effect, Deicmans will likely only have four years of collegiate eligibility, turning 20 at the beginning of April. The new rule states that an athlete’s clock will start at full-time college enrollment or the academic year after their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. For Deicmans, this means that his clock likely started last fall, giving him a maximum four years at Kentucky.

Deicmans’ Lifetime Best and Conversions

Kentucky is coming off an 8th place finish at the SEC Championships last season, scoring 582 points to sit about 30 points behind LSU (614) and almost 80 points ahead of Texas A&M (503.5).

Deicmans’ converted times fall just outside of NCAA qualification in his events with the 100 back cutline sitting at 44.82 last season and the 200 back cutline sitting at 1:39.53.

At the SEC Championships, however, Deicmans could be a multi-event point scorer. His 100 backstroke converted time would have been 25th in prelims, just four hundredths behind Hayden Meyers of Georgia, who finished 24th in 46.94.

In the 200 back, his converted time would have qualified for the ‘B’ final, where he would have finished 13th overall. His 200 free and 200 IM would both have been outside of scoring position.

The University of Kentucky retains its top two 100 backstrokers, Lysander Osman and Devin Naoroz from last season, who are both faster than Deicmans’ converted times. Only Naoroz was faster in the 200 backstroke, though.

He will join a small recruiting class of all international swimmers for 2026 consisting of Italian Filippo Bertoni, Estonia’s Siim Keskula, and Romania’s Darius-Matei Trenchea.

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Over the last several recruiting classes, the University of Kentucky Basketball program has come up short in terms of landing the “big fish” in either recruiting or the transfer portal.

But recently, head coach Mark Pope and his staff landed Milan Momcilovic — the top target in the entire transfer portal — from Iowa State to join their team for the upcoming season.

While many people clearly played a role in getting Momcilovic to Kentucky, former Wildcat Tyler Herro clearly had his fingerprints on the move.

Tyler’s dad — Chris — was Momcilovic’s coach back in AAU and (of course) was heavily connected to UK through Tyler back around the COVID years when Momcilovic was being recruited out of high school.

“Tyler reached out to me. Chris (Herro) and my dad are pretty good friends because they used to coach together on the EYB,” Momcilovic said during Thursday’s media scrum. “So, he was calling me, and he was obviously telling me, ‘Go to Kentucky. Go to Kentucky.’ I really like the Herro family. Obviously, I listen to them, but it was my decision at the end of the day.”

Though Kentucky never reached out originally back during his high school recruiting, they did come knocking most recently during this past summer, and with the help of Herro’s encouragement, Momcilovic will represent the Big Blue Nation this fall in Lexington for a chance to try and bring banner No. 9 home to UK.

Can’t love this enough.

No return to college bball for Billy D.