Interesting take on Norm Roberts.

S

salty dog

Well-known member
 How about this on Florida's coaches.

"Donovan simultaneously found Norm Roberts, the former St John's University head man who had achieved a remarkable turnaround of a languishing Big East school's basketball past. Roberts found himself on the outside of the Red Storm's program after a loss in the first round of the 2010 NIT, and he was looking for work"

From Bill Koss Fox sports.
 
The remarkable turnaround was from a meaningful program into a losing program with worse yet to come if his tenure was not terminated. :whistle: . 
 
The remarkable turnaround was from a meaningful program into a losing program with worse yet to come if his tenure was not terminated. :whistle: . 
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I think the remarkable turnaround he was referring to the fact that Roberts inherited a team that finished 6-21 the year before and had something like 8-9 total players, 5 of which were walkons. Oh yeah, they needed that many walkons because of how many players were kicked off the team. Remember, Roberts wasn't hired until April, and had a lot of ground to make up in the recruiting scene (please don't start any Lavin comparison because its a completely difference situation). And even though his record was terrible, he increased or at least maintained the same number of wins in 5 of 6 seasons. He was showing a little improvement, but it just wasn't enough.

Now I am not declaring him the next John Wooden or anything, or saying that he would have won a national championship if he had more time, or hell even have made the tournament, but you make it sound like he was the worst coach in the history of basketball, and I don't think that is the case.

And let's remember something else, when he was hired, our program was an absolute mess. Needless to say, we didn't exactly have that many high profile coaches lining up at our door. The job just was not that appealing. He took a chance and came here when not many other people were willing to, and you have to respect him for that.

One final thing, regardless of wins or losses, he got our program to do things the right and legal way. In today's world, with all the scandals of improper benefits going on, he could have easily have offered gifts or cash to recruits to come here, but he didn't. Illegal benefits would probably have been his best pitch in recruiting, since we didn't have much else going on at the time, but he didn't do it.

Yes, we all know he was an awful coach and his firing was justified, but....

let it go and move one!!!
 
I think the remarkable turnaround he was referring to the fact that Roberts inherited a team that finished 6-21 the year before and had something like 8-9 total players, 5 of which were walkons. Oh yeah, they needed that many walkons because of how many players were kicked off the team. Remember, Roberts wasn't hired until April, and had a lot of ground to make up in the recruiting scene (please don't start any Lavin comparison because its a completely difference situation). And even though his record was terrible, he increased or at least maintained the same number of wins in 5 of 6 seasons. He was showing a little improvement, but it just wasn't enough.
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What's striking (or at least interesting) is the difference in perception between the 2 or 3 hundred diehard fans who frequent this board and the rest of the world. According to Sports Illustrated SJU under Mike Jarvis was one of the top 20 most corrupt programs in the history of college basketball - in a world that included murder at Baylor, longstanding institutional corruption at Kentucky, organized crime involvement that culminated with Jack Molinas getting his brains blown out, and John Calipari, that's saying something extraordinary. And according to the rest of the world Norm was hard working coach who by doing the right things the right way took that cesspool program to the brink of the NCAA tournament. Whereas according to the fanbois here SJU under Mike Jarvis was a "meaningful program" - for data sets where meaningful includes one final four in the modern era; impliedly a "winning program" - because if Norm tranformed it into a losing program it must have been the opposite before; and as a coach Norm was lazy, venal, and an ignoramus. In reality SJU had begun its slide into irrelevance toward the tail end of Louie's tenure - a long slide into oblivion slowed only briefly by Fran - and Norm's real shortcoming was that he was ill-equipped to be a head coach in the best conference in college basketball. Its somewhat ironic that the same fans who can't fathom how UCLA fans might overvalue their heritage in evaluating TGAPL's tenure there are blind to their own myopia when it comes to SJ. 
 
the norm "hatred" has less to do with norm's sub-mediocrity and more with the so-called fans who feel/felt compelled to goose his "accomplishments" at any opportunity.

with a few and far between high points, the program was mediocre at best with looie at the helm. he kept the admin happy and quiet while the weight of his wonderful personality took care of the rest. the free fall began when he passed the baton to mahoney and the rest is history.

it's just giving norm another verbal lap dance to imply he turned the program around. turned it around to what? he left one player...malik stith. that's it. had the normies had their way, we'd be a bottom feeder forever.
 
The Big East is about to break apart.

We're about to start a season with seven scholarship players, only one of whom has logged a minute of D1 ball.

Our coach is battling prostate cancer.

And we're still talking about Norm f'ing Roberts.  
 
Our coach is battling prostate cancer.

And we're still talking about Norm f'ing Roberts.  
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Sure, I'd like to cure TGAPL's cancer by posting on the internets but having tried unsuccesfully to cure Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome by playing fantasy baseball I fear it's a dead end. My colleagues and I originally thought that playing any of the fantasy sports would be an efficacious treatment for EDS, but in a double blind study of the double jointed we discovered that none of the sports were as availing as convention treatment. The results of our study, published in the peer reviewed The Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neural Fantasy Interactions (http://goo.gl/5GDx) caused quite a stir, both among interweb doctors and pimply faced middle aged dweebs in Derek Jeter jerseys worldwide webwide. But unfortunately, despite our hopes and hours spent hanging around in AOL chat rooms, all of our patients continue to suffer painful swelling and social stimatization, and web surfing remains contraindicated for EDS and most other diseases.
 
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