But it boils down to better basketball players...just like anywhere else. So how do you do that at Virginia Tech? Well it isnt likely that top athletes will consistently fall in love with Blacksburg, VA as a location. So there needs to be factors that can override the location. Facilities? Hahn-Hurst is a wonderful facility, a great selling point and a good start. Cassell itself is a C to C- in terms of what VT is competing with to land those recruits. Access to and from Blacksburg? Closest airport is Roanoke that has daily commercial flights to DC, Atlanta and Charlotte which are three key areas for being consistently in front for top level talent. That's a haul. Life outside of basketball? There's basically one street of bars, no clubs, and mostly house parties dotting campus and the surrounding area. Fishing and hiking are a premium, but thats not typically what top level athletes from the above areas are interested in. Blacksburg is a town of 44,949. The closest area larger than 150,000 residents is Charlotte 2.5 hours away, Richmond 3 hours away or Knoxville 4 hours away. By the start of the 2024-25 football season, the ACC plans to have schools in the following population centers: San Francisco/Berkey/San Jose, CA (Cal, Stanford) Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX (Southern Methodist) Miami, FL (U of Miami) Atlanta, GA (Georgia Tech) Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC (NC State, Duke, UNC) Winston-Salem/Greensboro/High Point, NC (Wake Forest) Louisville, KY (U of Louisville) Pittsburgh, PA (U of Pittsburgh) Syracuse/Rochester, NY (Syracuse U) Boston, MA (Boston College) South Bend, IN is larger than Roanoke and within 1.5 hours of Chicago and 2.5 hours of Indianapolis Really, the only members which are not located in high-population counties are: Florida State (Tallahassee, FL) **197,102** Clemson (Clemson, SC) **17,986** Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) **44,949** U of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA) **45,672** Clemson, smaller than Blacksburg, has an advantage in being 2 hrs from both Charlotte and Atlanta. It should also be noted that VT consistently out-recruits Clemson in basketball....for a reason. With populated areas comes an ability to recruit easier from those areas because it can be a short trip home when necessary. And for a school that doesn't have an easily accessible airport, no night life to speak of and increasingly older facilities the offseason can be an absolute slog in trying to retain athletes even if you can convince them to turn down those metropolitan areas in order to come to Blacksburg. So...how about cheating? Sure, that may work, but unless the HC is independently wealthy, VT boosters haven't shown an overwhelming propensity to throw money at basketball under the table. This means that cheating can only go so far. You'll be left with top-heavy rosters, no depth and a rebuild every 2 or 3 years once that talent moves on. *ahem* Buzz Williams... So...how about NIL deals? Same as above really. Most of the NIL deals are going to football. It's a football-centric town/alumni. Likely always will be. And some people will probably even pop in this thread to respond that NIL **should** all be funneled to football...which precisely illustrates the point. VT would have to put together NIL deals that are not only comparative to what they're seeing at other schools in more populous areas, but ALSO have to beat those deals by a comfortable margin in order to make up for the inadequacies above.