The Virginia Tech men’s basketball team lost several key players from last season, both to graduation and the transfer portal, leaving head coach Mime Young to rebuild his roster and dive deep into the transfer portal himself to put together a 2024-25 roster.

The veteran coach has accomplished that by bringing in some players with a lot of experience, but getting them on the same page early in the season is easier said than done. In mid-August, CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein released his ACC Offseason Breakdown, which also includes his preseason power rankings, and the outlook for Young and his team is not promising.

Rothstein posted a number of different topics in his conference breakdown, including power rankings where he ranked Virginia Tech 16th out of 18 teams. That’s right, 18 teams like California, SMU and Stanford are joining the ACC this season and the only schools he ranked below the Hokies were Boston College and California. He predicts Tech’s starting lineup will consist of Hysier Miller, Jaydon Young, Jaden Schutt, Ben Burnham and Mylyjael Poteat, with Young and Poteat being the only two players who were in the program last season.

His 15 impactful transfers include former Hokies center Lynn Kidd, who entered the transfer portal right after the NIT loss to Ohio State and landed in South Florida with Miami. Miller was one of the 15 transfers who flew under the radar while his preseason ACC dark horse was Georgia Tech.

Rothstein sees Virginia Tech in the same position that 247Sports’ Issac Trotter ranked them in May in his way-too-early Power Rankings at No. 14. There’s no doubt that Virginia Tech has a lot of questions coming into the season and that a lot of questions need to be answered before the season even starts. All in all, that’s not a great outlook for the Hokies and that shouldn’t be a surprise after the changes they’ve gone through.