Billy Preston to Oak Hill; Top 2017 recruit wants UK offer

Billy Preston, one of the top prospects in the 2017 basketball recruiting class, has decided to transfer schools for his senior season of high school.

The 6'10", 230-pound forward is currently ranked 13th in ESPN's current recruiting rankings. He is a lot better than that if you ask me. While transferring for your final year of high school is a bit of a red flag, you'll understand and even support Preston's decision when you hear all of the details.

Preston has played in California at St. John Bosco and Redondo Union high school, and he's most recently been playing at Advanced Prep International in Texas. API had been loaded with an extreme amount of talent in Preston's time there; playing with the likes of Terrance Ferguson (top Arizona commit though may play overseas), Trevon Duval (top-5 recruit in 2017), and Mark Vital (4-star Baylor  commit for 2016).

Now, Preston has decided to play for legendary high school coach Steve Smith (a personal friend of John Calipari) at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. If you know anything about high school basketball, then you know that Oak Hill has been the prestigious powerhouse of the entire country for a long time. The amount of talent that school has represented in college basketball and the NBA is unreal.

A never ending list of Division-1 talent from Oak Hill in recent years has included our very own Doron Lamb and NCAA champion Duke Blue Devil Quinn Cook. Other notables include Florida State's Dwayne Bacon, UNC's Nate Britt, Indiana's Troy Williams, UCLA's Jordan Adams, Purdue's AJ Hammons, Georgetown's D'Vantes Smith-Rivera, LSU's Keith Hornsby, West Virginia's Juwan Staten, and a lot more. Top 2016 recruit Harry Giles made the same decision to transfer there last year before tearing his ACL.

I haven't even gotten to the notable NBA players that Oak Hill has pushed out in the last few decades. Those players include Brandon Jennings, Kentucky's own Rajon Rondo, Ty Lawson, Josh Smith, Steve Blake, Michael Beasley, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Ben McLemore, Stephen Jackson, Ron Mercer, and Jerry Stackhouse.

Starting to see why Preston wants to play there? There's even more to the reason why he's transferring to the high school powerhouse.

Preston has claimed that Kentucky would be towards the top of his list if John Calipari sends an offer his way. For whatever reason, Cal has always been hesitant to offer players at Advanced Prep. We saw this when Emmanuel Mudiay, who holds ties to API and went to Prime Prep, had so much drama was going on a couple years ago.

There's also Terrence Ferguson, who's having eligibility issues and may play overseas after ending his high school career ended at API.

Some have gone as far as to call API the new Prime Prep. As you may recall, Prime Prep routinely had elite recruits who failed to get eligible in college.

Maybe getting to watch Preston at Oak Hill and far more likely to be eligible in college will have Coach Cal luring this kid in.