SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – Middle Tennessee’s annual “Blue Raider Blitz” tour made its fourth of five stops on Wednesday night held inside the Blue Ribbon Room on the grounds of The Celebration. Derek Mason, Nick McDevitt, and Rick Insell all spoke to the Shelbyville crowd about each program’s upcoming season individually as well as the growth of MTSU as a whole, specifically about the new SAPC building for student-athletes.

Shelbyville's "Blue Raider Blitz" crowd on Wednesday night listens to the panel of coaches talk about their respective upcoming seasons.

T-G Staff Photo by Noah Maddox

For football, Mason brought in 62 new players, including 30 high school recruits with 20 of those recruits from the state of Tennessee. Thus, MTSU finished with the top-ranked recruiting class in Conference USA despite going 3-9 (2-6) a season ago. 

“We needed players to fit our mold,” Mason said, “Our push is also to fill Floyd Stadium because the fans change the energy of the stadium and affect how the games are played.”

On the hardwood, both Nick McDevitt and Rick Insell experienced similar levels of roster turnover, primarily due to graduation. On the Men’s side, McDevitt is replacing nine members of a team that finished 22-12 (12-6) and second-place in CUSA a year ago. So far, he has filled eight of the nine roster spots, and seven of those eight signees are already on campus meshing with the six returners.

“I really like our group,” said McDevitt, “They’ve started to mesh and gel well. You really just never know if there’s going to be a turf war between new guys and returners, but we really like how this group is going about their work.”

Five members of the team are from the state of Tennessee while one incoming freshman hails from right here in Shelbyville – Jax Howard of The Webb School.

For Coach Insell, he is faced with the unique challenge of having to replace all five starters from a season ago. Knowing that possibility was highly probable coming into the season, Insell and his staff made sure to hit the ground running on the recruiting trail, and he feels like yet another stellar season is in the cards for his group.

“We got our wagon loaded,” Insell joked, “We have a good chance to win another 20-25 games and go to the NCAA Tournament. I’m pretty excited about what we’ve got.”

His team is also set to host a great group of teams inside Murphy Center this season. The full schedule has not been publicly released, but the likes of Tennessee, Auburn, Belmont, and Memphis are all slated to come to Murfreesboro at some point during the 2025-26 campaign.