Buzz Williams Looks To Continue To Turn Virginia Tech Basketball Around

If you were wrapped up in all of the other stories that were floating around in the ACC, you may have missed what was going on with the Virginia Tech Hokies and their head coach Buzz Williams. Quietly, Williams guided the Hokies to a 10-8 conference record. To put that into perspective, that’s only one loss behind both the Duke Blue Devils and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and four losses behind the North Carolina Tar Heels. Not bad for a team with an inferior roster.

The Hokies finished 11-22 in 2014-15, which earned them their fourth straight last-place finish. In 2015-16, they finished with a record of 20-15. That doesn’t necessarily look great on paper, but it marks the second largest turnaround in history for an ACC basketball team. Williams, for his career, owns a 60 percent win percentage with a record of 184-123.

No one’s going to confuse Virginia Tech’s 2016 recruiting class with Duke’s. The Hokies don’t have one commitment in the top 100 players ranked by ESPN. Actually, they only have one player that has agreed to join the team, and he wasn’t on the radar of any of the major programs as recruiting started. Couple that with the fact that Satchel Pierce and Jalen Hudson both decided to transfer within days of each other, and it appears that the Hokies and their climb up the conference ladder may take a step backwards.

The ACC has taken its rightful place back at the top of college basketball with the most recent version of the NCAA tournament sending two teams to the Final Four. The Hokies aren’t ready to win the ACC tournament yet, but they appear to have the right man for the job with Williams. In college basketball, sometimes that’s all it takes.