Penn men’s basketball reeled in two recruits from across the pond, receiving commitments from a pair out of Ireland and England.
Keelan Cairns and Simeon Esprit, teammates at Barking Abbey — a basketball academy in Essex, England — committed this weekend to play college ball in Philadelphia.
Cairns is a 6-foot-10 forward from Belfast, Ireland, with an outside shooting touch. He tweeted Sunday night that he had committed to the Quakers.
According to a source close to the situation, Cairns held an offer from Hartford, where former Penn assistant coach John Gallagher now heads the Hawks program.
The source added that Cairns’ high school in Ireland has connections to Penn through the Penn Relays and that the guard had visited Philadelphia and New England on a school tour.
The source further indicated that Barking Abbey teammate, Simeon Esprit, had also committed to join Cairns at Penn.
Esprit, a 6-foot-6 guard, played for England’s U-16 men’s basketball team. The two visited campus last week, sources said.
They are the fourth and fifth recruits to join coach Jerome Allen’s first official recruiting class. Last week, Allen and the Penn coaching staff were also seen giving a campus tour to former Gonzaga Bulldogs freshman Keegan Hyland, who left the Washington school after a semester.
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