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The one-year-old son of UA graduate assistant Liam Lloyd is already booked to make the trip with USA Basketball’s U19 team to Switzerland along with several members of the Lloyd family.

Just like Luka did regularly last season while following Liam and Tommy on Arizona Wildcats’ road trips, along with Liam’s wife, Halle, and Tommy’s wife, Chanelle.

“Luka has been on like 20-plus planes at this point,� Liam Lloyd said after a recent USA Basketball workout. “He might set some records, and, yeah, he’s comfortable on planes.�

The trip to Switzerland will be Luka’s longest yet, but he’ll have plenty of familiar faces around him this time: Liam said the traveling party will include his two sisters, Sofia and Maria, along with Chanelle and Halle. They will all head to Lausanne, Switzerland, a few days before the FIBA U19 World Cup begins on June 28.

That will be helpful for Team USA because, as UA trainer Justin Kokoskie said he’s found after three trips with USA junior national teams, local fans tend to love rooting against the Americans.

“We’ll have a little crowd there and some of the players’ families are traveling as well,� Liam said. “So it’ll be awesome.�

During the U19 tournament, Liam will be on the floor with his dad and USA’s other coaches, as he has been for the U19 training camp in Colorado Springs, helping out as a support staffer.

“I’ll help out with video, kind of whatever they need,� Liam said.

It’s the sort of role Liam is likely to fill at Arizona next season as a UA graduate assistant. Liam spent two seasons each as a scholarship player at Grand Canyon and NAU before finishing his playing career by spending a fifth season as a walk-on at UA under his father in 2024-25.

Now, he’s transitioning this summer into a coach on the highest level in junior basketball.

“It’ll be a great experience for me,� Liam said. “A great growing, learning experience.�

Fresh fuel station

Before and after workouts in the Sports Center II building on the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center campus, U19 basketball players have access to a buffet of food like no other.

They can line up with other Olympic hopefuls — even some who are in town from other countries — and pull down levers for whatever salad ingredients they choose or stare at a wall of 75 different trays of leafy greens that are grown in a glass case inside the dining hall.

Brian Knutson, the director of good and nutrition for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, says he has a “seed list� of 32 types of leafy greens that he grows in specially fertilized trays, allowing him to meet the specific demands of wrestlers and boxers who can be on narrowly tailored diets.

“I’ll use a lot of the micro greens, as a lot of our wrestlers, boxers — the weight management sports — are on smoothie plans,� Knutson said. “They do it themselves and we teach them so they’re able to make their own smoothies.�

This month, Knutson said the U.S. training facility is hosting triathletes, basketball players and wrestlers from places such as Ukraine, Croatia and Georgia that are participating in an international wrestling event.

While each team typically has their own dietician, Knutson described one common theme.

“If you can meet the fueling needs correctly, you can make food taste great,� Knutson said. “It’s not just, ‘I’m gonna eat steak every night.’ That’s not the right thing to do. If we can teach athletes how to eat correctly, that’s huge. And it’s great. We have a lot of fun.�

Dybantsa show coming

Because Arizona was assigned to play BYU both home and away for the second straight season in 2025-26, that means U19 teammates Koa Peat and AJ Dybantsa will face each other at least twice in Big 12 play.

“We’re definitely both looking forward to that,� Dybantsa said. “It’s gonna be a crazy environment playing at their house but also when they come play at the Marriott Center.�

Together, Peat and Dybantsa helped lead the USA’s U16 team to the Americas Championship in 2023 and the U17 team to the FIBA U17 World Cup gold last summer. While the U19 camp is the highest-level national team in the USA Basketball program, with both college and high school players, Dybantsa said some things haven’t changed.

“It’s kind of mix� of players, Dybantsa said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s too much different because USA instills the same strengths in every team.�

Five-part plan

In its attempt to help American basketball stay on top of the ever-improving national team programs elsewhere in the world, USA Basketball holds five major junior events every year.

The organization typically puts together two national teams every year that rotate between U16 and U19 levels: Last year, Lloyd’s U18 team competed in the FIBA AmeriCup, and the U17 team won the FIBA U178 World Cup gold.

This year, it’s the U16 AmeriCup team and the U19 World Cup team (the AmeriCups are qualifiers for the next year’s World Cup competitions).

USA Basketball also holds two junior minicamps, one in Colorado Springs in October and one in April at the NCAA Final Four city, plus the April Hoop Summit game, in which top U.S. juniors face an international team in Portland.

The Hoop Summit game is often tightly contested, while it also might be worth noting that USA’s U19 team did not even medal in 2023.

“They’re getting better at a faster rate than we are,� said Sean Ford, USA Basketball’s national team director. “Sometimes when you’re the chased, as opposed to the chase-ee, it’s hard.

“You’ve got to figure out a way to improve, even when you’re still winning. What we’re trying to do to the best we can at all of our levels is to have skill be a luxury rather than a requirement to win, to have us be able to win the FIBA game without being superiorly talented.�

The big number

29 — Percent of U19 players who become first-round NBA Draft picks. Dybantsa is projected as the possible first overall pick in 2026.

Quotable

“There’s such a sense of pride with USA Basketball. Obviously, you have the Olympic team with LeBron and Steph. This is the team right under that. You want to play in the NBA, and you want to represent the United States on the biggest stage in the Olympics? This is how you get there.� – UA and U19 athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie, who is working with his fourth U.S. junior national team.