Five-star incoming ASU center Jayden Quaintance and several Arizona recruiting targets are among the 30 players UA coach Tommy Lloyd will be working with at USA Basketball's U18 training camp next week.
Lloyd has been named the head coach of the U18 team, which will train in Colorado Springs starting on May 23 and then participate in the FIBA U18 AmeriCup from June 3-9 in Argentina.
Arizona has extended a scholarship offer to one of the top class of 2025 camp participants, wing forward Hudson Greer, while expressing interest in other invitees that include 2025 Las Vegas center Xavion Staton and 2026 guards Kaden and Kalek House of Phoenix Shadow Mountain.
However, one of UA's top 2025 targets, Gilbert Perry's Koa Peat, will play instead for USA Basketball's U17 team. That team will compete in the U17 World Cup in July, and Peat said during USA Basketball's Junior Team Minicamp in April that he was leaning toward playing U17 because of the higher level of competition.
While also competing at USA's April camp over Final Four weekend, Greer said Arizona was βpretty high on the list,β though he hadnβt yet cut down his potential college choices. Greer said he already has visited hometown Texas, as well as Creighton and Arizona for the Red-Blue Showcase last October.
A 6-6 wing from Austin, Texas, Greer said he liked the way Lloyd deployed Pelle Larsson, noting it was βthe way (Larsson) ran the floor and also coming off ball screens as their three guard, just really letting him fill in a role of just doing everything on the floor.β
Players can't turn 18 before Jan. 1 in order to be eligible for U18 competition, but Quaintance and Duke-bound five-star center Patrick Ngongba were among five class of 2024 players who qualified and were invited to the U18 camp. The other 2024 players invited were Purdue-bound center Daniel Jacobsen, Texas-bound guard Tre Johnson and Illinois-bound center Morez Johnson Jr.
USA Basketball also invited 22 players from the class of 2025 and three in the classs of 2026, including the House brothers and five-star Florida wing Alex Constanza.
Lloyd will have two assistant coaches during camp and in the AmeriCup -- Texas Tech's Grant McCasland and Notre Dame's Michael Shrewsberry -- while Duke's Jon Scheyer is one of four camp coaches who will help while USA trims its roster from 30 to 12 players during training camp.
USA's other camp coaches include Josh Schertz of Saint Louis, Ben McCollum of Drake and Justin Gray of Coastal Carolina.
After a week of training camp, the final U18 team is scheduled to depart on May 31 for the tournament in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 2024 AmeriCup is a qualifier for the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup in Switzerland, and Lloyd is also expected to be head coach of USA's team in that event.
During an interview last week at an Arizona fan event at Union Public House, Lloyd said he had just had a Zoom call with coaches and administrators in preparation for the USA camp.
"You're familiarizing yourself with some of the guys coming to tryouts because you want to be able to put a name with a face, and then it's building a small foundation for how you want to play on each end of the court," Lloyd said. "It was just getting together and opening the lines of communication."
