The Virginia Tech Hokies men's basketball team is an NCAA Division I college basketball team competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Home games are played at Cassell Coliseum, located on Virginia Tech's campus in Blacksburg.
The Hokies have made the NCAA tournament 13 times, the most recent appearance coming in 2022. With the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament due to COVID-19, the Hokies have made five straight appearances in the NCAA Tournament. They have reached the Sweet Sixteen twice, in 1967 and 2019. They advanced to the Elite Eight once in 1967.
The Hokies won the ACC Tournament title in 2022, the Metro Conference tournament title in 1979, the Southern Conference regular season championship in 1959–60, and two NIT titles in 1973 and 1995.
History
Early years, Southern Conference, Independent
The Hokies' first intercollegiate basketball game was played January 22, 1909, resulting in a 33–26 win over Emory & Henry College. During the 1909–10 campaign, the Hokies completed the only undefeated season in school history by posting an 11–0 mark.
From 1921 to 1965, Virginia Tech was a member of the Southern Conference. In 45 years, Tech won one regular season conference championship. That was in 1960, when under coach Coach Chuck Noe the Hokies hit the 20-win mark for the first time. That team lost to West Virginia, led by Jerry West, in the conference tournament championship game, and therefore was not eligible to advance to the NCAA tournament.
Tech left the Southern Conference in 1965, and in its first season as an independent went to the NIT for the first time in school history, posting an overall mark of 19–5 after losing to Temple in the first round. It was coach Howie Shannon second year at the school. The next year, in the 1966–67 season, Tech earned its first trip to NCAA tournament. That year, Tech won two games in the tournament that included only 23 teams, making it to what is now called the Elite Eight. The team finished with a 20–5 record. Shannon coached at Tech for seven seasons, and posted 104 wins, with only one losing season.
In 1971, Tech hired 29-year old Ohio State assistant coach Don DeVoe. In 1973, Tech made its second appearance in the NIT, and stunned the country, winning four games in Madison Square Garden by a total of five points, including a heart-wrenching 92–91 overtime win over Notre Dame. At the time, the NCAA only invited 32 teams, and only winners of conference tournaments were eligible. Tech earned an independent berth in the 1975-76 NCAA tournament in a field of 32. DeVoe and Tech parted ways following that season when he refused to sign a new contract after openly admitted that he was a candidate for the vacant head coaching job at Ohio State, his alma mater.
The Metro Conference Era
In 1978, one year after former Tech assistant Charlie Moir took the reins from DeVoe, Virginia Tech joined the Metro 7, a conference that did not have a football championship. Tech's first year in the Metro led to its first conference championship. Even though it did not compete in a round-robin regular season schedule, it was able to beat regular season champion Louisville in the semi-finals and Florida State in the tournament championship game to earn its third trip to the NCAA tournament, where it lost to NCAA runner-up Indiana State led by star Larry Bird.
Tech finished second, or tied for second, in the conference three times in the next seven years, and won 20 games in seven of its first eight seasons in the Metro. Moir guided Tech to 213 wins in 11 seasons from 1976 to 1987. The Hokies appeared in four NCAA Tournaments and went to the NIT four times in Moir's tenure as coach. Fortunes changed for the Hokies in 1986–87 when the team had its first losing season since 1969–70. Moir and Tech reached an agreement to part ways following an NCAA investigation that left the team on probation through October, 1989. Tech paid Moir $250,000 to buy out his contract.
Tech hired Moir's assistant Frankie Allen as interim head coach to lead the program in the 1987–1988 season while it searched for an athletic director to replace Bill Dooley. Allen was Moir's first recruit at Roanoke College, and that institution's first African American athlete. He had been on the Tech staff for 11 years. When Dave Braine was hired as athletic director, he gave Allen the job as head coach. Allen led the Hokies to a 19–10 record and a third place tie in the Metro conference in that year that he began as interim coach. However, he did not have another winning season in his next three years, and his contract was not renewed.