"You've got to keep the main thing the main thing and that's winning": Green, Loofe rise off bench in win over Bearkats

2/24/2025 9:39:00 AM | Men's Basketball

The Blue Raider bench showed up in a big way to push MTSU past Sam Houston on Saturday afternoon

By: Sam Doughton

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Walk into the Murphy Center after a men's basketball practice and you'll likely find Tre Green on the court. More specifically, you'll find him in one spot, in the right corner beyond the three-point line, the part of the court nearest to the Blue Raider pep band when the stands are filled on Saturdays.

But on empty afternoons after practice, it's often just Tre Green and a teammate or coach, feeding him threes in the corner, with the Baltimore, Maryland native swishing nearly every attempt.

Green has practiced so many shots from there, Middle Tennessee Head Coach Nick McDevitt says it's Green's "on base" corner.

"Reps, reps is definitely the main backbone to that corner three," Green said. "(Coach McDevitt) jokes with me in practice a lot. That right corner, where I shoot from, I make a lot of my shots from right there."

Green's three-point success in 2025, making 48.1 percent of his threes (26-for-54) this season after making 5-for-9 attempts beyond the arc, four of which came in the corner, en route to a team-high 17 points on Saturday in a 74-70 win over Sam Houston, might be the best "on base percentage" a baseball coach could reasonably expect of out of their best player. For McDevitt to have that sort of sharp shooting off the bench, coupled with Green's defensive intensity as a perimeter defender, it's a nice luxury for a head coach to have. And one that's embraced by Green's teammates, McDevitt said.

"Cam (Weston) and Roc (Jlynn Counter) saw early that Tre Green was kind of feeling it a little bit and kept getting him the ball," McDevitt said. "We needed every little bit of it."

MTSU often wins the "bench points" stats most nights, a product of having Camryn Weston come off the bench and still play over 25 minutes most games. But even excluding his nine points, which pushed him over the 1,000-point mark for his career, on Saturday, the Blue Raiders would have rolled over the Bearkats, outscoring their bench 28-13 in non-Weston points. In addition to Green's 17, the Blue Raiders were buoyed by nine points from Chris Loofe, another player his teammates say is always grinding on his own time.

"There's never a time that he's not working," Weston said of Loofe. "Even after practice...they'll just be a couple of us sitting in the locker room talking and what not. And we'll just see Loofe come in just drenched, still sweaty. We're thinking, 'We got done with practice about two hours ago. What'chu doing?'"

The work is evident all over the court for the sophomore, from the corner three he made, a piece to his game he's spent hours this offseason adding and refining, to his finishing in the paint, becoming more of a lob threat, including a massive dunk on the head of Sam Houston's Kalifa Sahko that gave the Blue Raiders a four-point lead with 12 seconds to play on Saturday. Always a strong rim protector on defense, Loofe put in work in the weight room to be able to body up guys more.

If it weren't for the double-double machine ahead of him, Essam Mostafa, McDevitt said that Loofe likely would play 20-25 minutes a night. He often gets subbed out even when he's playing well. But the fact that he doesn't get those minutes doesn't get him down, McDevitt said, allowing Loofe to thrive.

"You've got to keep the main thing the main thing, and that's winning," McDevitt said. "Every night is not going to be your night because we've got a deep bench. We've got enough guys that can go in there and help us."