NORM ROBERTS LOOKS TO TAKE BACK NYC

St. John's head coach looks to take back home turf

by Zach Smart


With additions to the administraton staff in the St. John's basketball program of Oswald Cross and Kimani Young this summer, Norm Roberts is reaching out to the New York City high school and AAU programs for some help. The help he needs is to convince local hoop stars to stay home for college basketball, Roberts spent some time at the Big East media day talking about the challenges of keeping the talent home.

“We’re going to try to recruit the best kids in New York no matter what. We’re always going to try to,” said Roberts, who already secured 2009 guard and local product Omari Lawrence.

“But the key is, they’re not always going to stay home. I think people tend to forget that they don’t look at it from the opposite side. You know, sometimes kids that live in a rural area will say, ‘I’m sick of living in this rural, country area. I want to go somewhere in the metropolitan area.’ Sometimes you have the city kids say, ‘I’m sick of living in the city, I want to go somewhere else.’ And that’s what happens. What we’ve got to do, is get the guys that are the best, the guys that want to stay home, that want to be here and make them as good as they can possibly be.”

Roberts continued,“St. John’s, for a long time, did not get everybody. Ed Pinckney went to Villanova, Rod Strickland went to DePaul, Kenny Smith went to North Carolina but what happened here is they got Mark Jackson. You didn’t worry about other guys going (out of New York). So we’ve got to deal with the guys we’ve got.”

In today's game, recruiting is the lifeblood of your program. Recruiting is a sport within the game of college basketball and is a year-round topic. Staying ahead of public perception and increasing your college basketball odds of winning can be accomplished on the recruiting trail.