RUSTON – Louisiana Tech heads to Huntsville, Alabama to take on Middle Tennessee on Thursday night in the quarterfinals of the 2025 Conference USA Men's Basketball Championship.
 
GAME INFORMATION
Date/Time: Thursday, March 13 | 8 p.m. CT
Location: VBC Propst Arena (Huntsville, Ala.)
TV: ESPN+
Radio: LA Tech Sports Network | LA Tech Athletics ap
 
ABOUT #6 LOUISIANA TECH (20-11)
LA Tech enters the tournament having won the regular season finale over UTEP, 76-58. It marked win No. 20 for the Bulldogs, the 30th time in program history reaching the milestone. It is also the 11th time in the last 13 seasons that LA Tech has won 20+ games, something that only 19 over Division I programs in the country have accomplished.
 
The Bulldogs put on a shooting clinic versus the Miners, hitting 12 of their 17 three-point attempts for 70.6 percent. It was the fourth-best shooting percentage from downtown by any DI team this season (min. 15 attempts) and was the second-best three-point percentage in LA Tech history (min. 15 attempts).
 
The two lefty shooters, Al Green and Amaree Abram, went a combined 9-of-11 from deep. For Green, it was a career-high six made three-pointers, the most by a Bulldog in a single game this season. The duo has racked up 122 triples this season. Abram, who was an All-CUSA Honorable Mention selection, has made a team-high 66 threes, four shy of cracking the top 10 in program history. Meanwhile, Green is shooting a team-best 42.7 percent from beyond the arc, which ranks seventh in CUSA.
 
Daniel Batcho was named First Team All-CUSA, becoming the first Bulldog to earn the honor twice. He was also named to the CUSA All-Defensive Team for a second year in a row and was awarded CUSA Defensive Player of the Year. The power forward leads LA Tech in scoring at 16.9 points per game, having registered double-digit points 27 times this season. He currently ranks second in the country in field goal percentage (68.7), a mark that would set a program record and be third best in CUSA history. which and 26th in the nation in total blocks (62). He became just the fourth Bulldog in program history with back-to-back seasons of 60+ rejections.
 
Sean Newman Jr. earned Third Team All-CUSA honors, a year after being an Honorable Mention selection. The point guard ranks top five in the country in both total assists (238) -- third most in program history and fifth most in CUSA history -- and assists per game (7.9). He has dished out 5+ assists 27 times this season. He can also score it, averaging 9.9 points per game while ranking second in the league in free throw percentage (83.3), having missed only six free throws in league play (51-of-57).
 
LA Tech is 11-10 all-time in the CUSA Tourna­ment, having reached at least the quarterfi­nals in every appearance. The Bulldogs have won at least one game in the tournament eight of the 10 times.  They last advanced past the quarterfinals in 2022 when the team made it all the way to the championship game.
 
ABOUT #3 MIDDLE TENNESSEE (21-10)
Middle Tennessee ended up tying for second in the league standings and earned the No. 3 seed in the CUSA Basketball Championship. The Blue Raiders are one of the hotter teams heading into the tournament, having won four of their last five games with their lone blemish being an 86-81 home loss to Liberty. MTSU bounced back from the defeat though, pounding FIU by a final score of 78-56 in the regular season finale. MTSU has made the semifinals of the CUSA Tournament in each of the last three years, having last won it all in 2017.
 
The main reason for MTSU's success in confer­ence was its offense. The Blue Raiders ranked No. 1 in scoring offense during league play, averaging 73.7 points per contest. They have scored 70+ points in eight straight games en­tering the tournament. They also rank No. 2 in field goal percentage at 44.7 percent.
 
MTSU has a three-headed scoring monster with the trio of Jestin Porter, Essam Mostafa, and Camryn Weston. Porter, a Second Team All-CUSA selection, is averaging a team-best 14.8 points per game and has made a team-high 76 three-point­ers, fifth most in the conference. Their other guard Weston, an All-CUSA Honorable Men­tion selection, is also a lethal scorer averaging 11.9 points per game. He was recently named CUSA Player of the Year following a 30-point performance at New Mexico State.
 
Arguably their best player as of late though has been Mostafa, who was named First Team All-CU­SA and CUSA Newcomer of the Year. The TCU transfer is averaging 14.2 points and a league-best 9.2 rebounds per game. The big man has 13 double-doubles this season, which ranks 18th in the country. One of those came last week when he posted 30 points and 20 boards versus Liberty.
 
THE SERIES
LA Tech leads the all-time series over Middle Tennessee, 17-8.  The two programs first played way back in 1959 and later met twice every season from 1987-90 before becoming league foes in the Sun Belt Conference for one year (2000-01).
 
The Bulldogs and Blue Raiders became conference opponents again when the two institutions joined CUSA in 2013. Since then, LA Tech owns a 10-6 advantage in the series, having won six of the last nine meetings including a sweep of this season's series (75-69 in Ruston and 85-74 in Murfreesboro).
 
Thursday will be a rematch of last season's quarterfinal between LA Tech and Middle Tennessee, won by the Blue Raiders, 70-67. It is the exact same scenario in which the Bulldogs swept the season series and then faced off against MTSU in an 8 p.m. quarterfinal showdown at VBC Propst Arena.
 
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