Basketball fans around the country are gearing up for March Madness, a period of constant play with conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament.  

Individual conferences start tournaments this week running through March 15, set to end hours before Selection Sunday for the NCAA bracket.  

The focus for teams is the idea of ‘getting hot’ at the right moment going into their conference tourneys.  

Middle Tennessee men’s basketball is on the right track to get hot with one week left in the season.  

The mindset is one game at time because every other team wants to be in the tournament, so each game comes down to who wants it more, senior Alec Oglesby said.  

For most of the Conference USA schedule, the Blue Raiders found themselves on the wrong side of close games.  

Four of the team’s nine conference losses came in one possession games along with a four-point overtime loss to Florida International University and a five-point loss to Western Kentucky University.  

Middle Tennessee has won its past three games, two of which were double digit wins and the third being an overtime victory.  

“Putting both sides of the ball together, cause we’ve had stretches this year where we couldn’t score it, but we are really guarding,” head coach Nick McDevitt said. “…It’s hard to win games when you’re scoring 58, 60 points. Then, all of a sudden, we hit an offensive rhythm and we’re scoring it and we took our foot off the gas defensively and now we’re playing games in the 80’s.” 

The team showed that they can hold opponents to low scores and showed that they can score a lot of points, now doing both at the same time is crucial, McDevitt said. 

The wins were against University of Delaware, New Mexico State University and University of Texas at El Paso, the bottom three teams in the CUSA. The trio are all fighting to keep its season alive and claim the final spot in the tourney.  

The coaching staff sat down with the team and laid out when we have the right people in a positive plus minus then the team can win games, McDevitt said. 

“I showed them [Loofe, Torey Alston and Jahvin Carter] weeks ago, look at the plus minus,” McDevitt said. “When you guys have good plus minus, we’re winning games. We win games, and it’s hard for us when you don’t for us to win games.” 

Plus-minus measures the point differential for the team while a certain player is on the floor. The stat shows how players contribute on both ends of the floor and how certain lineups work together.  

Loofe has turned around his plus minus as of late. His conference low was –24 after MTSU lost to Delaware on Feb. 7. Now going into the final week of the season, Loofe sits at +12 with a positive or neutral day since the contest against the Blue Hens.  

“Me and Chris Loofe have been rebounding at a really high level between us two,” forward Torey Alston said. “… It’s just good that we have two guys that can just go do that.” 

Loofe, in his first year as a starter, backed up Jared Coleman-Jones and Essam Mostafa his first two years of college ball. The junior averaged 10.2 minutes behind Coleman-Jones and 13.8 minutes behind Mostafa.  

“He hasn’t had a bad day in practice,” McDevitt said. “I think I said that in here last time we were in here. He is stacking good days after good days.” 

Torey Alston, in a similar boat as Loofe, redshirted his first year and came off the bench for most of last year behind Kamari Lands.  

14 months ago, Alston wasn’t starting for the team, and now he drives winning with that level of growth is exceptional, McDevitt said.   

MTSU takes on FIU and Missouri State, eighth and ninth in CUSA at 7-11, for the final weekend. Both games earlier in the year went into overtime with the Blue Raiders beating Missouri State in double overtime 90-87 and falling to FIU 88-84 in overtime.  

The Blue Raiders are confirmed for the CUSA tournament but could still move up or down in the standings through the last two games.  

“Obviously not our goal, but we are in, but that doesn’t mean that we should practice on Monday or Wednesday, or travel any looser, any different because our toughness, our collective spirit has been in the right frame of mind for a while,” McDevitt said.  

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