When the Virginia Tech men’s basketball team had its season end in the first round of the ACC Tournament, head coach Mike Young said that the Hokies will be a better team in 2025-26. One way that the veteran coach has gone about trying to make that happen is the work he has done in the transfer portal and incoming freshman commits.
Another way that the Hokies need to improve is their overall performance on the court. A 13-19 season was just that, and in a lot of the major statistical categories, Virginia Tech struggled big time. They need to improve in a lot of them to erase the bad memory of this past season. Here are four key stats that Young’s team needs to improve on next winter.
Opponents 73.2 PPG
The old adage is that defense wins championships, or in the case of Virginia Tech, defense wins basketball games. Honestly, it does. You never would have known this past season, the Hokies allowed 73.2 points a game, which was 211th in the country.
How many times did Virginia Tech need to score in the 70s, 80s, 90s, or even break the century mark to win a game? Too many. Cleaning up the play on the defensive end and rebounding the ball better would go a long way into this stat improving in 2025-26.
Virginia Tech 69.2 PPG
If you average fewer scoring points than your opponents on a nightly basis, then you’re going to have the season the Hokies had. As mentioned above, how many times did they have to score well into the 70s, 80s, or 90s to win games? They were not built for that in a bad ACC.
There is a lot to factor in to why they averaged what they did, and they must average more a night to have any success. The non-conference schedule will be tougher, taking part in the Battle 4 Atlantis at Thanksgiving. All numbers must improve those games. Finishing 297th in the country is not going to cut it. How bad was it? The group of teams around included UNLV, Loyola, Maryland, Florida International, and North Carolina A&T.
Turnovers
Oh, where to start? Turnovers had a major effect on Virginia Tech last season. They turned it over a whopping 430 times, which averaged 13.4 a game. You’re not winning too many games with those numbers. A lot of the turnovers were because of poor decisions, unforced or just head-scratching decisions. It wasn’t one player, it was a total team effort. Brandon Rechsteiner spoke about it before transferring to Colorado State, but cleaning up the turnovers is an absolute must.
Field Goal %
In order to score, you need to shoot the ball well and, along with turnovers, that is something the Hokies didn't do. They finished 203rd in the country, shooting the ball at a 44.15% clip, while finishing 115th on 3-point field goal percentage at 35.05%. The 3-point shot has always been a big part of Young’s offense, and it has an opportunity to increase in 2025-26, and it must.
Honestly, there is nowhere to go but up in most of these stats, and if they don’t, Hokies fans could be looking at a repeat season that they just went through, which wouldn’t be good.