It was never going to be perfect.
Playing three Conference USA tournament games in three days, Middle Tennessee would never be able to play 120 minutes of perfect basketball, head coach Nick McDevitt said following MTSU’s regular season finale.
One round down and 50 minutes later, MTSU’s first game against Louisiana Tech was far from it, but the Blue Raiders prevailed 77-75 in double overtime.
Middle Tennessee center Essam Mostafa picked up his second foul three minutes into the game, throwing any form of perfection out the window. The graduate senior’s first foul came on an attempt to draw a charge on LA Tech’s Daniel Batcho.
Defensively, MTSU attempted to cut off the pass option, putting a defender between the ball and Batcho instead of a defender between Batcho and the basket. Mostafa’s second foul came in a situation where LA Tech’s big, gained position over Mostafa and forced the foul.
Mostafa grabbed Batcho from behind to stop the easy bucket, but the foul sent Mostafa to the bench for the rest of the half.
MTSU’s backup center Chris Loofe picked up two fouls in six minutes of play forcing McDevitt to put in Christian Fussell, who registered 36 minutes all season prior to the game.
Loofe tallied seven points on the night in 28 minutes for Middle Tennessee while Fussell grabbed a rebound in limited play.
Stepping in when needed, Loofe and Fussell were the first two Blue Raiders to receive a shout out in the locker room after the win, McDevitt said.
Middle Tennessee’s night changed when Batcho went down with 7:02 left in the first half. MTSU’s Jestin Porter had a fast break to the basket with four LA Tech players going up, all crashing into each other on the way down.
“He [Batcho] tried to go back in the second half, and I looked at him with about 15 minutes left, he said, ‘I can’t go coach,’ and I’ll be honest even when he went out I think we had our chances,” LA Tech head coach Talvin Hester said.
The redshirt senior is the central threat in LA Tech’s offense whether he has the ball bullying opponents in the paint or opening space for his teammates.
The second half was by no means any prettier than the first. Mostafa and Loofe both picked up a third foul putting the Blue Raiders into a tighter spot. MTSU guard Jestin Porter committed all four of his fouls in the second half.
The first 39 minutes and 29 seconds weren’t perfect but Middle Tennessee had the chance to end the night in no better fashion than a buzzer beater. With 31 seconds on the game clock and a full 30 second shot clock, MTSU drew up a final play.
Jlynn Counter found an open Justin Bufford for a left corner three-pointer, but after a brief review, officials determined that Bufford released the shot just seconds after the shot clock expired.
With one second left, the Bulldogs launched a full court shot that went out of bounds, delaying MTSU’s celebration and sending the game into overtime.
“All of a sudden JB [Bufford] makes the shot in the corner and all of our players thought the game was over, we won it in a dramatic fashion.” McDevitt said. “All of a sudden not only did you not win it, the game also isn’t over yet.”
Despite an imperfect showing from Mostafa in regulation, he made up for it in overtime, returning to the floor with four fouls. Mostafa went 3-4 from the field, using his size against a smaller LA Tech team, hitting what ended up as the game winning basket.
With LA Tech forced to play a smaller ball lineup in overtime, it just made sense to put Mostafa back in for the offensive advantage even with four fouls, McDevitt said.
After the late-night victory, the Blue Raiders have roughly 15 hours to rest up and prepare to face No. 2 seed Jacksonville State in the CUSA semifinals on March 14 at 2:00 p.m. CDT.
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