Virginia Tech men's basketball is entering the home stretch of its 2025-26 campaign and currently hold a record of 16-6 (5-4 ACC). The Hokies have at times played like a sure-fire NCAA tournament team, while at others like one that won't make it to the postseason at all.
So far, the metrics for Mike Young's squad this year are mixed. The Hokies rank 81st in assist/turnover ratio (1.4); 147th in assists per game (14.6); 82nd in scoring offense (81.5); 40th in three-point defense (30.1%); 168th in field goal percentage (45.5); 209th in scoring defense (74.6); and 171st in free-throw percentage (72.3).
Of all the statistical categories, however, Virginia Tech ranks the lowest in one specific metric: opponents' free-throw percentage. There are 365 NCAA Division 1 programs, and of those the Hokies rank 299th, according to Sports-Reference.com, as opponents make 74.6% of their shots at the foul line.
This statistic may strike you as odd and rightfully so. How can a team control the precision with which opponents make free-throws? The short answer is that they can't, at least not directly by playing defense against the free-throw shooter. This metric is largely just a measurement of how well a team's opponents happen to shoot free-throws in the aggregate over the course of a season.
Although it is impossible to directly prevent an opposing team from making a high percentage of its foul shots (with the exception of not fouling at all) the fact that Virginia Tech's relatively low ranking in this statistic year-over-year warrants further analysis, if only to throw theories against the wall that are intended to explain the unexplainable.
Virginia Tech's Struggles "Defending" the Foul Line
The Hokies' poor ranking in opponent free-throw percentage this season is not an aberration. Virginia Tech has suffered a similar fate in this category for the last several years, underscoring the consistency of its opponents' foul line shooting year-over-year, as confounding as that may seem. Surely this happens to other teams, but perhaps not to the same extent. Here's where Virginia Tech has ranked in this statistic over the previous five seasons:
