Virginia Tech Basketball: Grading the 2024-2025 season

The Virginia Tech Hokies have longed for success over the past couple of years. Since shockingly lifting the ACC Championship in 2022, Mike Young's squad has gone 51-49, including 26-34 in conference play.

This season was debatably the worst of the lot. The Hokies sat in the bottom half of the league in many ACC statistics, including points per game, defensive points allowed per game, rebounds grabbed, assist-to-turnover ratio and others.

Virginia Tech finished the year 13-19 with an 8-12 ACC record, Young’s worst overall record since joining Tech in 2019.

Today's task? Evaluating each stretch of 10 games (and one set of 12) to assess this squad’s overall grade.

Virginia Tech started the first 10 games 4-6. Admittedly, this was a tough stretch. After three early-season wins, the Hokies endured a six-game losing streak, which included losses to Penn State, Jacksonville, Michigan, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Pitt. Both Michigan and Vanderbilt finished with at least 20 wins, making those losses excusable. However, South Carolina and Penn State finished in the bottom two of their respective conferences, Pittsburgh was eliminated in the first round of the ACC Tournament, and Jacksonville was simply a loss that should have never happened.

The Hokies’ only other win to stop the six-game skid was a 95-67 victory over North Carolina A&T.

Tech once again went 4-6 over its next 10 games, which mostly included the beginning of conference play. Losses to Saint Joseph’s, Duke, Stanford, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Clemson followed.

Saint Joseph’s is an A-10 20-win squad this year, and Duke, Wake Forest and Clemson were all tipped to be preseason contenders. With two of those three games on the road, it was difficult to expect a weakened Tech squad to put up much of a fight.

Both Stanford and Georgia Tech were frustrating losses, as there was little difference in skill level between either of those teams and Virginia Tech. In fact, Stanford was projected to finish 17th in the ACC this season but instead earned a first-round bye in the conference tournament.

Of Virginia Tech’s four wins, three came against far weaker rosters. Neither Miami nor NC State made the ACC Tournament, and Navy finished 15-18, fifth in the Patriot League. The Hokies’ win against Cal was a nice benchmark, as it showed an ability to beat teams around them. However, as shown above, that ability to beat fellow middling teams was not always consistent.

To round this off, two extra games are included in the last chunk so the final two games are not left floating.

Tech mustered five wins over its last 12 games, with a highlight win coming in Charlottesville against Commonwealth foe Virginia. With that big win came some tough losses. The Hokies lost by 18 points to lowly Boston College, which did not make the ACC Tournament. A 32-point loss occurred to UNC in Virginia Tech’s last home game of the season, and Tech fell in the first round of the ACC Tournament to Cal in a double-overtime 82-73 loss.

The Hokies were never expected to compete for the ACC title, yet inconsistent home form, which saw the team finish 8-9 at Cassell Coliseum, is not acceptable. In true road games, Virginia Tech went a decent 5-5, but Tech never did enough to maintain momentum.

Overall season grade: D

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