Men's College Basketball 2021-2022 Season Preview: Virginia Tech Hokies

The college basketball season is just over two weeks away — time is just flying by. To get you ready for the season, I’m previewing the season in men’s college basketball, team by team. In these previews I will highlight key departures, additions, returners and overall DFS viability for each team. These previews will be heavily focused on DFS and fantasy in general, so keep that in mind when I’m talking about the relevancy of a player or team rotations.

We kick things off with the ACC, a conference that severely underperformed in the pandemic-impacted season last year. While the conference will inevitably have a handful of DFS staples for us to use each slate, it still seems like the ACC lost more talent than it was able to gain. With the transfer rules changing after March Madness ended it ultimately led to what was essentially free agency in CBB. There were coaching changes as well which I will talk about throughout this breakdown because new philosophies will mean new strategies for our DFS builds.

In this one, Virginia Tech.

(Check out our full college basketball season preview!)

Virginia Tech Hokies 2021-2022 Season Preview

2020-2021 record: 15-7 (9-4 ACC), third in ACC
Postseason: Lost in NCAA Tournament first round

Key Departures | Virginia Tech Hokies

Cartier Diarra (left to play professionally)
Jalen Cone (transferred to NAU)
Tyrece Radford (transferred to Texas A&M)
Joe Bamisile (transferred to George Washington)
Wabissa Bede (Graduated)
Cordell Pemsl (Graduated)

Key Additions | Virginia Tech Hokies

Storm Murphy (transferred from Wofford)
Sean Pedulla (3-star recruit)

Returners | Virginia Tech Hokies

Keve Aluma (15.2 PPG/7.9 RPG/2.2 APG)
Justyn Mutts (9.5 PPG/6.4 RPG/2.2 APG)
Nahiem Alleyne (11.1 PPG/2.6 RPG/1.7 APG)
Hunter Cattoor (8.5 PPG/1.9 RPG/1.4 APG)

Virginia Tech Hokies Outlook for 2021-2022

Mike Young got the Hokies into the tournament in just two years with the team, and he has done a wonderful job quickly building a roster around his system. He brought Storm Murphy in this year, and he obviously has experience coaching him during their time together at Wofford. Murphy will be relied upon to play heavy minutes right away, and this roster will pretty obviously be lacking in depth. This is bad for fans of the Hokies but great for us as DFS players. Less depth means more minutes, which in turn means more stats. Easy enough, right? Storm Murphy was a key cog last season, averaging almost 18 PPG while also producing 3.3 RPG, 4.3 APG and 1 SPG. He is a career 42% shooter from long range, highlighted by a 47% clip during his sophomore season in 2019. He can flat-out shoot the ball, and Young already knows how to use him so expect him to be a high-floor play each week.

Returning the bulk of their production from last year’s tournament team is clearly important and while losing Tyrece Radford hurts, they should ultimately overcome it with the Murphy addition. Keve Aluma was a bona fide fantasy stud at times last year which nobody could have predicted from his time at Wofford. Aluma was a role player during his two seasons at Wofford but did have solid averages of 7 PPG/7 RPG. During his first year with Wofford, his scoring average jumped to over 15 PPG while improving his RPG number to 8. Aluma also added three-point shooting to his repertoire and finished 2020 knocking down 35% of his 57 attempts. Prior to last year, Aluma had only taken one three-point shot in his career. A big year is in the cards for him. Justyn Mutts is a sneaky good shooter in Young’s motion offense and showed off his ability to fill up a box score a lot last year. The Aluma/Mutts frontcourt pairing will not be easy to guard and will be very safe players on most slates. Foul trouble would be the only thing that could possibly derail them in this offense in my opinion.

Nahiem Alleyne (41% three-point shooter) and Hunter Cattoor (43%) round out the likely starting 5. As you can see, this team is full of snipers and will be one of the better teams to target throughout the year. Efficient players playing big minutes due to a lack of depth is music to my ears.

(Check out our rankings of the top 100 teams and top 100 players for men’s college basketball in 2021-2022.)

Summary

The Hokies don’t have much depth, so the starting five can be relied upon for DFS purposes in all formats throughout the year. Storm Murphy and Keve Aluma will be reunited after playing together for two years at Wofford. Jalen Cone has left the program and now plays at NAU, which means he can no longer torment DFS players as much.