Preseason KenPom Rankings Revealed: Where Did Virginia Tech Men's Basketball Land?

The Hokies look to rebound off last season's 13-19 struggle.

Mar 11, 2025; Charlotte, NC; Virginia Tech guard Ben Hammond (11) drives to the basket. | Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

College basketball analyst Ken Pomeroy has released his KenPom preseason rankings ahead of the 2025-26 campaign. Virginia Tech came in at No. 71 in the nation with a net rating of +11.55. Tech tallied an offensive rating of 111.6, 58th-highest in the nation and a defensive rating of 100, 94th-highest. The Hokies' defensive rating is lower than every team ahead of it save for one -- Syracuse (No. 68 overall, No. 100 defense).

Here's an explanation for how the KenPom ratings actually work:

"The inputs into the Pythagorean equation are the team’s adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies. Any time you see something “adjusted” on this site, it refers to how a team would perform against average competition at a neutral site. For instance, a team’s offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions) is adjusted for the strength of the opposing defenses played. I compute an adjusted offensive efficiency for each game by multiplying the team’s raw offensive efficiency by the national average efficiency and dividing by the opponent’s adjusted defensive efficiency. The adjusted game efficiencies are then averaged (with more weighting to recent games) to produce the final adjusted offensive efficiency.

While the pythagorean winning percentage is calibrated to the likelihood of winning, the efficiencies are based purely on scoring per possession with no consideration of winning or losing. This allows us to get both a chance of winning and a predicted final score with the system, and makes the system much more predictive than if we ignored scoring margin. It also has the advantage of giving a rating in offensive and defensive terms, and an SOS in those terms, as well."

Last year, the Hokies ranked No. 164 in the nation with a rating of -0.02, the 185th-highest offensive rating (106.5) and 166th-hghest defensive rating (106.5). Of note: Tech's tempo last season was a 65.3 tally, good for No. 295. This year, that tally has moved to 69.6 and No. 300, respectively. Tempo is not the demarcator for good and bad teams; several teams can be below averge wiht a top tempo number and vice versa.

Houston, Pomeroy's preseason No. 1, ranks No. 361 in tempo. Florida, Pomeroy's preseason No. 2, meanwhile, ranks at No. 37.

Virginia Tech also ranked No. 12 in the preseason ACC media poll that released this morning. Relative to its in-conference foes, KenPom agrees, slotting the Hokies at No. 12 in the ACC and No. 71 overall. Of note: Providence, the Hokies' second regular-season opponent, sits at No. 48.