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Once more into the breach ... all the attention has rightfully been on VT's Orange Bowl Champion football team, but it's time for ACC hoops to kick into gear for the Virginia Tech men's team. The Hokies open at Duke on Sunday night, and as Seth Greenberg's crew starts ACC play, here's a look at where they stand.

First, the ACC standings, arranged by overall record:

The ACC is the #1 RPI conference in the country, and you can see why, with three teams in the top 7 and four in the top 10. The Hokies have a solid-but-not-great RPI of 62, and that puts Tech 9th out of 12 ACC teams.

Speaking of VT's RPI rank, the Hokies have some work to do if they want to make the NCAA Tournament. VT has only one OOC game left, against Richmond (#155) on January 14th, so there is no chance to improve the RPI via OOC games.

That means Tech is going to have to climb the RPI via ACC games. The Hokies currently have a strength of schedule rank of 91, which will improve throughout February and March. Unlike last season, when the Hokies mostly dodged the ACC's top teams, playing them just once, Tech will take on most of the ACC's heavyweights twice this year. VT has home and away contests with Clemson, Duke, and FSU, all currently in the RPI top 10. Tech only gets UNC and Miami once, though.

The SOS will improve, but to make the Big Dance, Tech will have to win some of those games. Assuming a win over Richmond, VT will have to win 9 ACC games to get to 19 overall wins, and 10 to get to 20 overall wins. That's going to be a tall order.

How do the Hokies stack up statistically against the rest of the ACC? Looking at stats prior to conference play can be apples and oranges, but that won't stop us. Here's the bad news first.

That's a lot of statistical categories in which the Hokies are being outpaced by their ACC brethren in OOC play. Admittedly, the 8th-or-worse cutoff point shapes perception here, as four of the ten categories have the Hokies 8th.

What does Tech do well? The answers will surprise you.

That's it, but though it's only a few stats, they are unusual ones for the Hokies to be strong in. Tech shot 68.1% from the free throw line last season but have upped their game significantly from the stripe, now shooting 74.3%. The Hokies are led in that category by Malcolm Delaney (89.6%) and A.D. Vassallo (82.5%). In addition, Dorenzo Hudson is 9-of-10, so those three starters combine to shoot 87.7%. Jeff Allen shoots 64.9%, and J.T. Thompson, in three games since his return, is 5-of-6.

In three-point shooting, A.D. Vassallo (36-of-90, 40%) and Malcolm Delaney (27-of-73, 37.5%) are Tech's big guns. Jeff Allen actually has the best percentage, at 45% (9-of-20).

Those three guys shoot 39.3% from the field, which would put the Hokies #1 in the conference. But the team percentage gets dragged down by the ice-cold (so far) trio of Dorenzo Hudson, Hank Thorns, and Terrell Bell, who have combined for 11-of-55 (20%) shooting from three-point range. Of those three, only Hudson (7-of-26, 26.9%) shoots over 20 percent.