Midseason Thoughts

Virginia Tech — winners of two basketball games in a row — seems to be finding their stride.

Or at least, getting close to finding their stride. Tech took care of business against Boston College, 76-71, on Tuesday night in a respectable if underwhelming performance. The win gave Mike Young his first victory against the dreaded Eagles in six tries, the team its second straight overall, and kept the Hokies in the esteemed club of Teams Who Don't Have Any Bad Losses and Would Really Love Joe Lunardi to Be Nice to Them.™

(It's a very exclusive club.)

With the season more than halfway over, I wanted to dish out some numbers on where Tech has improved — specifically on the defensive end — analyze a couple of clips, and provide an update on the latest NCAA Tournament projections, along with the rest of the ACC.

Defensive Turnaround

By far the most positive development this season has been Virginia Tech's defense. I wrote about the unit's improvement about a month ago and can happily report it has continued to surge.

As of today, the Hokies rank 47th in KenPom's adjusted defensive efficiency, which would be the best for a Mike Young team ever. They also rank in the top half of the league for conference-only games, which has only happened once before in Young's tenure at Tech (that was the 2020-21 season, prior to defensive specialist Chester Frazier's departure for Illinois).