How pizza, basketball and cross-country moves shaped Tayt Lucas into one of Butler’s leaders
BUTLER TWP — Tayt Lucas’ basketball journey involves pizza, Chewbacca and a string of persistent text messages.
Lucas and his father, Steve, moved three times, settling in Butler from across the country after living in Iowa and Arizona. The younger Lucas, a senior, has gone from the badgering soon-to-be new kid in town to one of the most important players for a Butler hoops team that’s 12-6 (5-6 WPIAL Section 1-6A) and fighting for a WPIAL playoff spot.
In his time in charge of that program, coach Matt Clement has had a handful of his players move into the district. But Lucas was persistent in his desire to join the Golden Tornado.
“It was emails, and then when I got his phone number, it was text messages and ‘When are we starting?’” Clement said. “A lot of times when someone moves in, it’s somebody that just wants to go play basketball that isn’t into basketball. ... I could tell that this kid was really into it.”
His path is why.
“I just grew up with basketball from a young age with my dad,” Tayt said. “He played (pickup and in adult leagues) with a bunch of overseas/D-II, D-I players. It grew up with me.”
Tayt was introduced to the game when he was around 4 or 5 years old at a YMCA where his dad worked in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The younger Lucas spent hours upon hours in the gymnasium beside Steve’s office there.
“When I was working, he’d be out there dribbling, shooting hoops with other kids, with older kids, with kids his own age,” Steve said of Tayt.
As he grew, he picked up fundamentals working with Kenyon Murray, the father of Sacramento Kings forward Keegan Murray.
Before Tayt entered eighth grade, he and his father relocated to Chandler, Ariz., a move that coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They had to sleep on air mattresses while they waited three months for their furniture to arrive, but Tayt had the necessities — a basketball and his shoes.
The two found outdoor courts that were well-kept with lights for them to play until nearly midnight. Their favorite was Chuparosa Park, where they played 1-on-1 and Tayt tried to dunk on Steve on an 8-foot hoop.
“We call it Chewbacca Park,” Tayt said. “That’s not really the name of it, but we just call it Chewbacca Park because that’s how we first enunciated it. There was like a little low rim, and I was like, ‘Dad, let me try to dunk on you!’ ... It was hard, but we found stuff to do and it was fun.”
The father and son also bonded while trying different pizza joints, usually ordering pineapple and pepperoni, a “perfect combination of spicy and sweet,” Steve said.
“Not like, you know, your chain, not like your Papa Murphy’s, your Pizza Hut,” he said. “A local thing that we’d never heard before, whether it was a sports bar or a pizzeria. It’s just something that stuck.”
Tayt eventually joined two teams within a travel program, where he met his best friend, Elijah Brush, who will join him on Geneva College’s men’s basketball team next year.
Tayt played against Koa Pete, who’s rated No. 9 in the ESPN 100 for the Class of 2025, and Cameron Holmes, No. 20 in 2026. The experience, to Tayt, was “like a whole new world of basketball. You had film, you had media guys all around. It was crazy.”
The Lucases left for Gilbert, Ariz., right down the road, before Tayt’s freshman year. He attended Mesquite High School, where he was part of the basketball program’s first state championship team.
Then came another uproot, two time zones over, in 2022.
“When I moved here, I was like, ‘Butler, Pa.?’” Tayt said. “We were looking around. We came to a couple restaurants, and we were like, ‘What’s there to do for fun?’ They were like, ‘Man, you’ve got to drive 30 minutes if you want some fun.”
Fun for Tayt just requires a basketball. Clement labeled him “the consummate senior this year.” He invited teammates to watch their summer games Steve had filmed. He was a big part, too, in getting teammates who’d been busy with baseball in the summer up to speed, all while patting younger players on the back and reminding him he was once in their shoes.
On the court, Tayt has contributed 14.8 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game.
“He fits the mold of the dudes that made this program important again,” Clement said. “It wasn’t not important, but it’s life to him.”
