City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Two area high-major targets are headed to a New England prep school.

Sedee Keita and Eric Ayala, who both play their AAU basketball with We R1, are headed up to Putnam Science Academy (Conn.) this fall, as first reported by The Recruit Scoop's Alex Kline.

Keita, a rising senior 6-foot-10 power forward, has compiled over 20 Division I offers in the last few years. Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Southern Cal all offered the athletic big man in July, joining teams like Temple, Xavier, South Carolina, Texas Tech and others in pursuit.

The Philadelphia native played this past season at 22 Feet Academy (S.C.) after spending the prior season at Vermont Academy.

Ayala, a 6-3 guard from Delaware, has eight offers of his own: Temple, St. John's, Saint Joseph's, Cincinnati, La Salle, Iona, South Carolina and Southern Cal. 

He spent the first two years of his high school career at the Sanford School, playing alongside fellow Division I recruit Mikey Dixon.

(UPDATE, 7/31 1 PM: Kline reported yesterday that Ayala was reclassifying from 2017 to 2018, but Ayala later tweeted that he had not made an official decision yet.)

At Putnam Science, the two will join a bevy of other high-major talent, including 2016 UConn commit Mamadou Diarra and impressive 2017 wing Hamadou Diallo, both of whom play their AAU basketball with the NY Jayhawks.

The entire school actually looked like it would need to close earlier this spring, with head coach Tom Espinosa and all of his players ready to transfer over to Woodstock Academy, but a late investment by a group of Chinese backers was enough to keep the school open and run the post-graduate basketball program.

CoBL will have more on this story as it becomes available