Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Norm Roberts retiring
- Thread starter dalydoseofhoops
- Start date
I think I was one of the few who didn't want Doherty. Felt he did enough damage at UNC.
I was not aware of Norm's record at Queens College until well after he was on board, here, so I talked myself into believing that he might be far enough removed from that, and that he'd be a better coach here (something like Greg McDermott now, since he had 4 straight losing seasons at Iowa St.). That, obviously, did not happen.
There was a lot of optimism in the first few months as is usual with this board.
Norm was the anti-Jarvis.
He slept on his mom’s couch in Queens before he brought his family over and bought a house here.
Within weeks he signed Geno from Lincoln, Dexter Gray from Mt. Vernon and Cedric Jackson from NJ.
So he was humble and was recruiting from local powerhouses.
It was a breath of fresh air and a lot of folks thought we might have our version of Roy Williams - a career assistant who takes over a storied program.
Those were the best days of Norm’s tenure.
Spocky Ramone
Well-known member
We were also snakebit during his tenure with injuries to Showtime, Ryan Williams, Rob Thomas.
I feel like I recall Norm being pitched to fans as a star recruiter. Of course that never quite turned out to be true. So many high level recruiting battles lost. But not all his fault.
Cedric Jackson who transferred out, wasnt able to shine , like the great Anthony Mason Jr did !!!
At our age hindsight is 20-40 at best.I'm not sure but I think I was pretty anti-Doh as well.
It's sort of funny when you think about the baskets we can put potential coaching hires in.
Lavin was redemption despite five sweet 16s and fired at UCLA. result: mixed
Doherty was redemption after Big East Coach of the Year at Notre Dame, meltdown at UNC, a holy grail job. Result: no hire but career fizzled
Pitino was redemption also. Result: unreal.so far
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A bit out of character for me, but what the hell lol. Thanks Bob.
Thanks Ken. Hope you're doing well.
He was hired because the Team had become such a complete and utter embarrassment to a Catholic university under Jarvis that it had to be put on back burner for a while and under care of a man with impeccable integrity (whether he could coach or not). Focus was not on getting most out of program at the time, it was the cleanse and detoxify the stench of horrific Jarvis so that program could result normal operations at some point in future. Unfortunately there were several bad hires after Norm that delayed us returning as a relevant program until Slick Rick.Don’t blame Coach Roberts for the doldrums of his years; blame President “Suits” Harrington for his hire and the less relevancy of the University as a whole that occurred during the last half of Harrington’s presidency.
Young Norm Roberts, with no prior D1 head coaching experience should never been hired to do battle with Boeheim, Thompson, and others in the old Big East. I am told that Harrington, alone, made the decision to hire Roberts without committee approval.
Making matters worse for Roberts success was that StJ’s was placed on probation for 2 seasons before his first recruiting cycle ended. A short time before his hire StJ’s brand was tarnished by national headlines about players involved with strippers in Pittsburgh. Roberts budget for staff and program had been reportedly cut from Jarvis’ budgets and Roberts was forced to work with one of the smallest budgets in the Big East. UConn hijacked his star recruits Doug Wiggins, etc. During the turmoil Harrington seemly trivialized the StJ’s national image in basketball and Harrington threatened to “shut down” the StJ’s mens basketball program.
See
HARRINGTON: CLEAN UP OR SHUT IT DOWN
Breathe this in: St. John’s is the fifth-winningest program in college basketball history. Great players Bob Zawoluk, Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson have worn the St. John’s jersey. The …nypost.com
As many have said Norm a great man and great steward for the program during dark time and the kids he recruited were credit to the university which was much needed at the time.
You should have stopped at great man. He was a disaster as a coach and he lost out recruiting on kids that did horrific stuff elsewhere like Doug Wiggins.
He did more hurt us than Jarvis could have in 50 years.
We could have hired Father Maher or mjmaherjr to do that
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The platitudes for Norm are a little (lot) over the top. Nice guy? Yes - his secretary (who lives in my
town) raved what a nice man he is.
Horrible coach? Absolutely. When a midmajor beat us at CA, their coach told a mutual friend. "I never saw anything like him at this level. Coaching is all about making adjustments to counter a team's strength or attack their weakness or counter a strategy. (Your press is working, they put in another ball handler, etc etc) Norm did nothing to counter what we were doing."
Another college coach was more direct when he said, "Norm sucked as a coach when I coached against his Molloy freshman team. He sucked at Queens college, and he sucks now".
He is a nice guy, and after Fraschilla and Jarvis crap, that's the sole reason Harrington hired him. That he even got that far in the process was a little ridiculous considering his lack of head coaching experience at D1.
If he showed even a lick of coaching ability, he'd have gotten a shot at d2 or even d3.
And unlike even Lavin, who openly rooted for us after getting fired, or Anderson, who showed up at graduation commencement for his seniors after he got fired, im not sure Norm ever rooted publicly for his so called "dream job" team. After 6 years of coaching here, it was a dream, a bad one.
Harrington hired Norm for all the wrong reasons, and giving him more time than Villanova gave Neptune was a total joke. Otis was 100% right - it's not Robert's fault that he was hired. He should never have been hired and should have been fired after 3 seasons at most.
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IMHO the best Coach Roberts post. You hit it all. Cheers.