He has a passion for music and plays multiple instruments. An Instagram with shots akin to those taken by a photography aficionado. A Medium page to express his thoughts on life. To say rising junior forward Lucas Lueth has various interests would be an understatement — he represents the intersection of art and basketball.
Hailing from Ames, Iowa, a college town where the Iowa State student body makes up nearly half the total population, Lueth’s path to Penn was as unconventional as they come. For starters, he only started taking basketball seriously in 10th grade, several years after most kids had already decided to commit to the sport. He also did not take the traditional route to playing Division I basketball, making a stop at the Junior College level before taking his talents to the Ivy League.
Lueth transferred to Penn before the 2025-26 season after spending two years at Kirkwood Community College. In his second season there, he led his team to a National Junior College Athletic Association Division II national championship and was named the tournament’s most valuable player.
With transfers only making up a small part of the student body at Penn, the adjustment was hard at first.
“It’s really hard to transfer and find your new group of people when everyone here has had two or three years to bond,” Lueth said. “So it feels like you’re kind of interrupting or putting yourself in a place that you weren’t there originally because everyone was here when they were freshmen.”
But being like everyone else just isn’t what Lueth does. He doesn’t conform, but rather creates. Whether it be the hustle plays he provides on the court or the music he makes with his guitar, Lueth is an artist. His works tell a story.
Lueth developed an appreciation for the arts before anything.
“I think I’ve always been into it a little bit here and there, but I’ve kind of spread my reach,” Lueth said.
Some of his earliest memories include playing the drums in front of his church at just six years old. The rising senior credits his upbringing as playing a big role in his love for music. Going to church with his family, singing, and dancing all contributed to this passion as he was growing up.
Although Lueth claims his parents didn’t entirely emphasize the fine arts, he credits the culture they created by playing gospel songs in the house while he and his four younger siblings took to their Saturday chores for developing this love for music.
Today, Lueth plays the piano and drums, has taught himself to play the guitar, and hopes to master the viola and violin next.
“I love music,” Lueth said. “I love listening. I love playing it. I love creating it, so music has basically always been there.”
But music is just one of his creative interests. His love for photography and self-expression is perhaps best represented on his Instagram. Being an artist, Lueth takes pride in the careful curation of the photos he posts.
“I just don’t want to post pictures of just random things,” Lueth said. “So I wanted to make a story, and there’s a storyline. If you go through some of the posts, there’s a storyline. There’s a theme … there’s darker [and] there’s lighter for a purpose.”
For the six-foot-seven forward, his Instagram is a mood board that details his story while capturing his emotions.
He also expresses himself through a pen. The Ames, Iowa native has a zeal for writing as yet another form of self-expression. He has a diary he documents everything in, as well as a passion for poetry.
“I just like writing. I like playing with words on the paper,” Lueth said.
Lueth even created a Medium page shortly after winning the Ivy League championship in March. He describes it as a way of educating people on his thoughts while reflecting on his own life.
With all these interests, Lueth remains a menace on the hardwood, hustling off the bench for blocked shots and rebounds to help his team win. He played a pivotal role in the Quakers’ Ivy Madness semifinal victory over Harvard, where Lueth dove for a loose ball, resulting in a possession gain for the Quakers during overtime of a must-win game.
But do his artistic and athletic endeavors exist separately, or do the two worlds collide? The answer to this question has changed over the course of Lueth’s life. Though he claims that they initially existed separately, he now describes basketball as an art in and of itself.
The rising junior believes the convergence of art and basketball began when he started to take the sport seriously. Before his sophomore year of high school, Lueth describes himself as not being very good at the sport. He recalls being on lower-tier AAU teams in his middle school years due to his lack of skill.
“I lost all my life because I was on the worst team, and it’s bad. So I just hated losing. So I wanted to get better and start winning,” Lueth said.
To do this, he realized he had to work hard at basketball just like he had done to improve in music.
“Once I started to take basketball seriously in like 10th grade, I saw basketball like I saw the piano, like guitar. If I wanted to be good at it, [I] have to work hard at it, and it’s like an art form.” Lueth said.
“Basketball is beautiful. The way people dribble, the way people shoot, the different forms. We’re all trying to make the same shot. Everyone’s form is a little bit different,” Lueth added. “So I feel like the court is like a type of canvas, I would say. It’s just how you paint your personality on there.”
Even in the darker times of his athletic career, art helped Lueth overcome hardship. When surgery for bone spurs in his knees sidelined him for his first season at Kirkwood, he picked up the guitar and taught himself to play, creating with his hands when he couldn’t use his legs.
Art has stayed with Lucas through the hills and valleys of his journey, with his works and endeavors representing the milestones in the gallery of his life. From playing drums as a child, to channeling the work ethic he learned from playing instruments to improve at basketball, to picking up the guitar when basketball was taken away from him, to creating a Medium page coming off winning a conference title, Lueth has continued to create at every stage of his life.
Life is a story. We are an audience. Art is the means by which Lueth chronicles his journey.
