Six teams sit ahead of Virginia Tech in the ACC standings. The Hokies play three of them.

That’s the good news for a 5–2 team stuck in a four-way logjam at 2–2 in league play with Pitt, Cal and Virginia. Clemson, No. 23 SMU, and No. 1 Miami are all still on the schedule, so the Hokies can do most of their climbing themselves. The three teams above them that Virginia Tech never sees are No. 17 Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Louisville.

The bad news is the two dents already on the résumé. Pitt won 35–33 in Blacksburg on Oct. 2, and Cal won 25–20 in Berkeley eight days later.

Those losses matter more than they used to. The ACC rewrote its tiebreaker this summer after Duke reached Charlotte out of a five-way tie in 2025. In a two-team tie, head-to-head now comes first. If that doesn’t settle it, the league turns to a SportSource Analytics résumé measure called the Team Success Ranking.

Translation: finish tied with Pitt or Cal, and the Hokies lose.…