Incoming Kentucky basketball player to compete with Team USA this summer
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Incoming UK basketball player Jasper Johnson made Team USA roster for FIBA U-19 World Cup.
- Johnson will be looking to win his second gold medal with the United States.
- Johnson joins 11 teammates for the summer tournament in Switzerland.
Jasper Johnson is going international this summer.
Before the incoming Kentucky basketball freshman begins work in Lexington, he will first be representing the United States in a prestigious international basketball competition.
On Friday, Johnson was announced as one of 12 players who will comprise the United States roster for this summer’s FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup. The competition will run from June 28 to July 6 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Johnson — a five-star guard prospect who is ranked by 247Sports as the fifth-best shooting guard in the 2025 recruiting class — survived several rounds of roster cuts to make the U.S. squad. Earlier this month, 31 athletes gathered at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to begin the tryout process to make the U.S. Under-19 team.
Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope served as a court coach during the early part of the national team training camp.
That group of 31 players was reduced to 18 finalists on Monday and 15 finalists on Thursday. Fellow incoming Kentucky freshman Malachi Moreno — the 2025 Kentucky Mr. Basketball who led Great Crossing to this year’s Sweet 16 state championship — was one of the Monday roster cuts.
The final three cuts to the Team USA roster were made and announced Friday.
Johnson — who began his prep basketball career at Woodford County High School in Versailles — will be joined on the United States’ Under-19 national team by the following players: Mikel Brown Jr., AJ Dybantsa, Caleb Holt, Daniel Jacobsen, JJ Mandaquit, Morez Johnson Jr., Nik Khamenia, Brandon McCoy Jr., Koa Peat, Jordan Smith Jr. and Tyran Stokes.
Brown is an incoming freshman at Louisville. Dybantsa, the top-ranked recruit in the 2025 class, is heading to Pope’s old program, BYU. Holt, McCoy, Smith and Stokes all hold Kentucky scholarship offers.
Stokes recently completed an official visit to the Wildcats.
A trio of name brand college coaches will be leading the Americans into the FIBA U-19 World Cup. The head coach of the team will be Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, with assistant coaches Grant McCasland (Texas Tech) and Micah Shrewsberry (Notre Dame).
Jasper Johnson has previous experience with USA basketball
Johnson has plenty of high-level experience when it comes to representing the United States.
He’s already won a gold medal as part of the American team at last year’s FIBA Men’s Under-18 AmeriCup. Johnson averaged 10.0 points and 2.7 assists in 15.9 minutes per game during that event, while shooting a team-best 42.3% on 3-pointers.
Earlier this year, Johnson was a member of the USA Men’s Nike Hoop Summit team that defeated a World Select team.
Johnson has also attended several junior national team minicamps and training camps in recent years.
Of course, the UK basketball program has a storied history when it comes to producing players who have excelled internationally for the United States. This stretches back to the “Fabulous Five” of Cliff Barker, Ralph Beard, Alex Groza, Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones and Kenny Rollins that won the gold medal at the 1948 Olympics in London, with Adolph Rupp acting as an associate coach.
In the most recent Summer Olympics in Paris in 2024, ex-Cats Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker and Anthony Davis were all part of the United States team that brought home the gold medal.
And as is normally the case when it comes to international youth basketball competitions, the United States will be the favorites to return home with top honors.
The first FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup was held in 1979 and, until 2007, it was held every four years. Since 2007, the tournament has been held biannually.
The U.S. has won the gold medal in the event eight times, most recently in 2021. The 2023 competition was won by Spain, which defeated France in overtime in the championship game. The United States finished in fourth place in the 2023 World Cup after losing to France in the semifinals and Turkey in the third-place contest.
In this year’s event, the United States was drawn into a potentially tricky group along with Australia, Cameroon and France.
This story was originally published June 20, 2025 at 12:23 PM.
