Make Room: One Prep Is Quietly Becoming the Fourth Power in Western Canada
For years the hierarchy in Western Canadian basketball has been settled business. WCPA, Edge, and CTA West, in some order depending on the season, have been the three programs everyone in the region measures themselves against. After watching One Prep run through four games this past weekend in Edmonton, it's time to start making room for a fourth name in that conversation. This wasn't a team with one good player carrying a roster. This was a team with legitimate size and talent at every position on the floor.
Start in the frontcourt, where Bilal Ama, a 2028 big man standing somewhere around six-foot-eight to six-foot-nine, gave One Prep a true anchor that most club teams at this level simply don't have access to. He's a heavy, sturdy frame with more mobility than his size would suggest, capable of putting the ball on the floor and finishing well against smaller opponents. Doubled in the post, he still has real growth to do, which is normal for a big with a full year of development still ahead of him. What isn't normal is the attention already circling him. Sources indicate McMaster has reached out to gauge his interest, a credible enough connection given the program's track record with talent of this archetype, and it's the kind of thing worth watching closely as his 2028 recruitment develops.
Then there's the story of the weekend, Isa Gwiboha. Midway through a conversation after one of his games, I was giving a promising guard some pointed advice, the kind you give a graduating senior about to run out of time. He gets to the rim well, plays with real charisma and energy, and carries himself like a leader who pulls his teammates together. He plays with the poise of a kid who could compete at the college level right now, which is exactly what was said to him, right up until he mentioned he's actually a 2030, not a 2027. The read on him didn't just hold up once the class year corrected itself, it got a lot more interesting. A built, Rodney Stuckey style guard already showing a one-dribble pull-up, a shot fake into a rise, even a turnaround in the mid-range, with the instincts to know exactly when to attack and when to pull it back, at that age, is not a normal prospect. He's a name to file away now and revisit often.
One Prep's identity piece, though, might be its defense, and that starts with Judah Wright. He played every possession of every game with two fists balled up, pressuring guards full-court, making every catch and every dribble a fight. It's not flashy. He doesn't need it to be. When his shots came, he made them, he got two feet into the paint when the lane opened, and he communicated constantly with his teammates, the kind of habits coaches notice even when the box score doesn't. The final game of the weekend, against CTA West, was where it all came together, and by the end of it, the label of defensive player of the event belonged to him and nobody else.
The headliner, if One Prep has one, is Lual Lual, a 2027 wing at six-foot-six to six-foot-seven who plays with the kind of positionless versatility that shows up more in the NBA than at the high school level these days. Shooting, ball-handling, size, all in one frame, in the mold of the do-everything wings the league has trended toward. He's the player who passes the eye test first and is the reason the team's ceiling is as high as it is.
Around him, Cole Miller gives the roster another shot-making, rim-attacking forward capable of playing some small-ball four, while another forward, Benjamin Fitzgerald, kept resurfacing in the notes all weekend as a name worth tracking closer. Another wing worth tracking is Coltyn Johnson, six-foot-five, who only played in one game of the weekend after coming back from an injury that kept him out the first two days, but made an immediate impression on Sunday. He's a dynamic on-ball defender capable of picking guards up ninety-four feet, applying pressure the length of the floor, forcing turnovers and getting his hands on passes.
The depth doesn't stop with the headliners, either. Behind Issa, One Prep can turn to Yafit Tekali, a crafty, poised point guard in the mold of a young Waqo Tessema, the guard who played at Cleveland State, bringing a calm, polished presence to the backcourt. There's also Marcus Taylor, a smaller guard who impressed with a nice cross-body pass through the paint, a serviceable table-setter who can get the ball over half court and get his teammates involved. Three guards deep like that means foul trouble or a slow start doesn't sink this team, they've got answers at the position.
What ties all of it together is the thing Ontario doesn't have enough of, size on the wing. Ontario produces talented guards at a high rate, year after year, but the multiple long, skilled wings that One Prep is rolling out, four deep, is rare. If this group stays together and keeps developing at the rate it showed this weekend, the conversation about the top programs in Western Canada is going to need a fourth chair at the table.
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