2022-23 Virginia Tech Men’s Basketball Season Expectations and Predictions

The season is finally one week away and the Virginia Tech Hokies will get a chance to put a tough football season on the back burner and focus on the ACC Champions Men’s basketball team defending their title. The roster has gone through some changes with Keve Aluma, Storm Murphy, Nahiem Alleyne, David N’Guessan, and John Ojiako moving on but this could be the Hokies deepest roster in recent memory with depth at every position. In this article, I will highlight players, expectations for the team and individual players, and the VTScoop team will give some predictions on how we think the season will turn out.

Even though the Hokies lost the talent listed above, most notably Keve Aluma, this team is still stacked with talented upperclassmen that have a chance to make a major impact. The non-conference schedule kicks off Monday, November 7th against Delaware State and it is the night the team plans to raise the ACC Championship banner. While there are some tough games mixed into the schedule, the non-conference slate doesn’t seem overly daunting. Dayton, Minnesota, and Oklahoma State profile as the toughest matchups for the Hokies.

The conference slate is where things get difficult, and while the team doesn’t have any extended road stretches there aren’t many breaks filled with teams projected to be at the bottom of the conference. The team opens up against North Carolina, the projected favorite in the conference and for the national title, but that is the only time the Hokies will play the Tar Heels. Unfortunately, the Hokies will play Duke, Virginia, and Miami twice and all three teams are projected to be at the top of the conference. You can click here to see the full schedule breakdown for the conference from when it was released.

Player Profiles

It will be hard to start talking about players on the roster without honing in on Justyn Mutts and Hunter Cattoor. Mutts was a star for the Hokies last season and is back for an extra season of eligibility because of the Covid year. Last year Justyn averaged 10.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 3.4 assists per game while hitting 33% from the perimeter. Cattoor was not far behind in production, averaging 10 points, 4 rebounds, and 2 assists per game and hitting 41.7% from the perimeter. Virginia Tech was known as one of the best perimeter shooting teams in the country last season and there is a legitimate chance that this roster will be even better in that category. 

Darius Maddox and Sean Pedulla are two other returners that have been named starters and both finished the season really well, showing their youth would not be a stumbling block and giving a lot of hope about what they could become. Maddox was the best three-point shooter on the team, hitting 50.6% of his attempts on the season. Sean was second on the team in three-point shooting percentage, hitting 44.7% on the year….