Buckeyes offer first 2023 basketball prospect in Rayvon Griffith
As most all of you know by now, Chris Holtmann and staff at Ohio State have been doing an excellent job of keeping the state's top prospects in Ohio and getting them to Columbus.
The Buckeyes snagged Justin Ahrens, a two-time OHSAA Division III state Player of the Year, back in 2018. Despite spending his final high school season at powerhouse prep school Brewster Academy, Alonzo Gaffney, originally from Garfield Heights (Ohio), committed to Ohio State’s 2019 class before transferring after a season and as we all know, the Buckeyes have found more success keeping kids in-state this year more than ever, snagging the top three 2021 prospects in the Buckeye state.
Kalen Etzler, who resides in Van Wert (Ohio), committed to the Buckeyes in May of 2019. He helped persuade Meechie Johnson, also out of Garfield Heights (Ohio), to pledge a few months later in August and as we all know, the state’s consensus top 2021 prospect, Malaki Branham, who is originally from Columbus, committed to Ohio State in July.
They’ve offered in-state 2022 prospects such as Shawn Phillips and Chris Livingston, both top 25 kids in the country, and also are in frequent contact with the state’s top three point guards: Sean Jones, Paul McMillan and Sencire Harris.
They got in contact with Livingston extremely early on in his prep career as they were his first offer all the way back on August 19, 2018, before he even played a high school basketball game. This was not extremely surprising to a lot of folks due to the high amount of national media buzz around Livingston’s skillset, and we saw Ohio State take a similar approach on Saturday, offering a 2023 prospect for the very first time.
Meet Rayvon Griffith. And remember his name.
Griffith, a 6-foot-5 wing who attends Cincinnati Taft high school, gained a lot of his national attention during the seventh and eighth grade AAU summers when he played alongside Bronny James on the North Coast Blue Chips, one of Ohio’s most elite youth AAU programs. Ohio State extended an offer to him last Saturday, August 29th, as he is the first prospect they’ve offered in the class of 2023.
Due to the attention that he received, he got the same treatment as Livingston as he also received an offer before playing a high school game, Griffith’s coming from Kent State, however. He picked up this offer at a summer team camp playing with Hughes (Ohio) High School, as he was slated to attend there for his freshman season before a last minute change of plans pitted him in the middle of a dominant roster at Hughes.
Griffith enjoyed a favorable freshman season at Taft. I got my eyes on him in the live setting twice, and although he is still raw in some facets of his game, I was really pleased with the fact that he’s a top 25 kid in the country and still competes his tail off on both ends on every possession.
While Rivals.com is yet to release their top 150 for the 2023 class, ESPN has Griffith ranked as the No.22 prospect in the country in their 2023 top 25. He is an uber athletic wing with an excellent frame. He has the opportunity to develop into an elite wing defender, is a very adept finisher near the rim and is continuing to improve as a jump shooter. Even on nights when his shot isn’t falling, Griffith gets involved in other ways such as grabbing offensive rebounds and banging bodies inside to create extra possessions for his team.
Despite Ohio State getting in the mix early on in his recruitment, Griffith also holds offers from Grambling State, Oklahoma State, and Alabama A&M to go along with Kent State which was aforementioned.
Now that they’ve extended an offer to one 2023 prospect, it will be interesting to see if the Buckeyes go after any others. I don’t expect them to get heavily involved on the recruiting trail for that class just quite yet, but I wouldn’t eliminate the idea that they get in the mix on some of the nation’s top prospects in that class similarly to how they did with Griffith.