Reynoldsburg 86, Groveport Madison 73
Raiders outscore the Cruisers by 11 in the final five minutes, remain undefeated in the OCC-Buckeye
REYNOLDSBURG, OH - Despite a final score that resulted in a double-digit victory, Reynoldsburg’s second win and regular season sweep against conference foe Groveport Madison was anything but comfortable.
Similar to their previous outing against the Cruisers on December 20, in which the Raiders had to overcome a deficit on the road headed into the fourth quarter, Reynoldsburg didn’t have to come from behind, but again had to shake off a tenacious, athletic Groveport team that had the score within two points with just over five minutes remaining.
Yet the home team Raiders, led by four future Mid-American Conference players, showed in the final minutes when they are at their best, there’s a reason why they are now 18-1 and one of the top ranked teams in the state.

After Groveport senior forward Sir Cox hit a three to trim the Raiders lead to 70-68 with 5:10 left on the clock, Reynoldsburg senior and Toledo signee Toby Nwokolo threw home a monstrous breakaway dunk followed by another dunk from senior guard Damon Griffin to push the lead to six.
With momentum swung back in Reynoldsburg’s favor, Groveport senior guard Kamar Keys nearly had the play of the evening when he almost pulled off the dunk of the year over Reynoldsburg’s Xavier McKinney, but drew the foul.
Yet Keys would miss both free throw attempts, followed by two more missed attempts at the line from Tyreke Ruffin at the 2:39 mark that seemingly took the Cruisers out of the game. The Raiders would go on to outscore Groveport 12-5 in the final minutes thanks to strong free throw shooting and key breakaway scores that finally allowed them to put away a Cruisers team that had won seven straight games.
It was another intense, late-game victory the Raiders have become accustomed to this season that head coach Andy Moore joked afterwards that games like this are making him age.
“[Groveport] is not just competitive, but they had as good of a chance as we did to win the game. [Cruisers head coach] Lamont Hampton does a great job and his kids play really hard and we knew that coming in,” Moore said. “We knew there were going to be runs, I was disappointed we were not able to sustain ours at times. But they are really good. Somebody is not going to want to play them in the tournament.”