St. John's renews coach Roberts' contract

Success in the classroom? How about on the court. It seems like ages since this team was worth caring about.

Check out BigEastBoards or Redmen.com to see how real fans of the program feel.
Absolute joke.
Father Harrington is happy that none of the players are being nailed for smoking weed or other indiscretions like what happened in Pittsburgh.
It is possible to be a moderately succesful team and have decent young men. St. Johns just seems to be settling for nice guys. We all know where nice guys finish.
Absolute disgrace what SJU basketball has become under the watchful eye of Father Harrington.

fire norm! i'm running out of money betting on the horses and my kid is eating me out of house and home. i need a good paying job that doesnt require alot of work and my boss doesnt expect any results

Do you know what this is all about???

This is about Father Harrington having a diminished interest in success of the basketball program in light of the successful $280 million capital campaign.

He figures that a clean program that loses is much better than a winning program and all that goes with it.

He figures that if he can raise $280 million while the team is in the dumper, with enrollment of quality students is up, then why the fuss over basketball?

He figures that a quality coach who would revive the program would costs close to $2 million a year. So pay Roberts 1/4 of that and watch him lose.

The team is on the verge of being bounced from the garden. Even against a top twenty team they are likely to draw less than 8,000 - and only that amount if the visitors account for 1/2 the attendance.

Season ticket holders are down to 2500 - most of whom have had tickets for at least 20 years and are conditioned to renew.

Norm Roberts did not recruit a SINGLE quality player for the upcoming season. Nine players have bolted his program, with more to come.

By renewing Roberts, a guy who has lost at EVERY level he has ever coached, SJU has insured that there will not be a return to glory, and an NCAA bid in the next 5 seasons is an improbability. As bad as Jarvis was, at least he took the team Frachilla recruited to the final eight.

I am convinced that Roberts would have screwed up even that talented team. The man cannot coach.

Signing Roberts to a five year contract is as irrelevant as the St.Johns basketball program. Why MSG would host this loser program that brings nothing to the table in NYC is beyond me. Hiring a coach that never coached before and then producing garbage results and not recruiting anyone worth mentioning is beyond belief.

That's almost as bad as the contract Dolan gave Isiah 2 years ago and we all know how that turned out.
St. John's has been irrelevant for a number of years now since the top players in the city go out of state. What's wrong with the way St. John's recruits? They no longer get the best players NYC have to offer. For them to get better they need to get better players.

In all fairness to coach Roberts, this was a very difficult situation for a first time new head coach to follow in light of the Mike Jarvis regime.

St. John's needed to hire someone that had the name recognition to rebuild the program as well as restore the St. John's name. Added to the AAU coaches 'relationship' to allow a school to recruit players to a school makes it difficult for St. John's to recruit top HS players nationally.

If St. John's is making the commitment for any coach to run a clean program a priority, I believe they need to commit to that alone or a coach with a proven track record to recruit and ultimately win on a consistent basis as well as running an infraction free program.