Wooden, 99, is being treated at UCLA Medical Center, according to the sources who were not authorized to speak publicly. A UCLA athletic department official declined to comment on the situation.

Wooden’s health has been an issue in recent weeks and he was briefly hospitalized about a month ago, a school source said.

Wooden won 620 games during his coaching career, which began at UCLA in 1948. He retired following the 1974-75 season, after his Bruins won their 10th title in 12 seasons. His “Pyramid of Success” is used as a teaching foundation in business and for coaches across the country, in every sport.

John Wooden Quotes:

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
John Wooden

Ability is a poor man’s wealth.
John Wooden

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
John Wooden

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
John Wooden

Be prepared and be honest.
John Wooden

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.
John Wooden

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden

Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden

Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
John Wooden

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
John Wooden

I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.
John Wooden

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
John Wooden

If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.
John Wooden

It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.
John Wooden

It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
John Wooden

It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
John Wooden

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.
John Wooden

Never mistake activity for achievement.
John Wooden

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
John Wooden

Forgive these Flyers for taking a little extra time to soak it all in. They’re not as accustomed to trophy ceremonies as the North Carolina team they had just beaten.

Marcus Johnson scored 20 points and Dayton denied last year’s national champs another title, topping the Tar Heels 79-68 Thursday night to win the NIT.

“This game kind of is a capsule of our season,” coach Brian Gregory said. “Started off great, had some tough times and then just kind of fight through, and ended up very successful at the end.”

After fading at the end of the season, Dayton recovered to win its first NIT title in 42 years. Relying on depth, defense and some clutch 3-point shooting, the Flyers took home their first title in 42 years and handed North Carolina one more disheartening loss at the end of a lousy season.

“It’s a tough feeling right now, there’s no question about that. It’s been an unusual year for North Carolina basketball,” coach Roy Williams said, his eyes red and puffy as he spoke about his seniors. “I’ve lived a charmed life in the past, and this has been a little tougher. I’m so proud of our guys for coming to play in this National Invitation Tournament and playing so well up until today and getting us to this point. We just didn’t finish the job.”

Reserve guard Paul Williams added 16 points for No. 3 seed Dayton (25-12), which bounced back from a disappointing regular season of its own to win its third NIT title and first since 1968 under coach Don Donoher. Picked to win the Atlantic 10 Conference, the athletic and experienced Flyers faded late and missed the NCAA tournament before turning things around and finishing on a high note. “We struggled through the season. But being in the NIT, we stayed positive and we showed we have heart and character,” said Chris Johnson, selected the tournament’s most outstanding player. “It shows today that we are a good team. We just won a championship.”

Will Graves shot North Carolina back into the game in the second half, finishing with seven 3-pointers and 25 points for the fourth-seeded Tar Heels (20-17), who started the season hoping for back-to-back NCAA crowns. North Carolina finished with the second-most losses in a single season in school history. Only once have the Tar Heels made it to the NCAA tournament the season after losing 15 or more games.

Chris Wright had 14 points for the Flyers, as did Chris Johnson — who scored 22 in a semifinal victory over Mississippi. Including the Rebels and Tar Heels, Dayton beat four teams from BCS conferences en route to the championship. Cincinnati and Illinois were the others.

“Love their intensity and enthusiasm and how hard they have played,” Roy Williams said. “We have had teams like that in the past that have played really, really hard, and very talented. Also, I think we started playing hard once we got in this NIT.”

The Tar Heels fell short in their attempt to grab a somewhat dubious piece of college basketball history. A victory Thursday night would have made them the first team to follow up an NCAA national championship with an NIT crown the next year.

With officials discussing expanding the NCAA tournament to 96 teams as soon as next year, this could be the last NIT, an event with a rich history that dates to 1938. NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen said Thursday no decision has been made about the future of the postseason NIT, which is operated independently by the NCAA.

“Might be a fitting way to end it, for us to win it,” Gregory said.

How down-and-out were these Tar Heels heading into the postseason? When the 32-team NIT draw was announced, they opened at 35-1 odds to win the title. And while Dayton has been a regular in this event, it was strange to see North Carolina on the college basketball undercard this time of year. One of the sport’s true heavyweights, the Tar Heels own five NCAA national championships, including an 89-72 victory over Michigan State in last year’s title game. Tom Izzo and the Spartans are back in the Final Four, set to play Butler in Indianapolis on Saturday. North Carolina was left to chase a consolation prize following a 16-16 regular season wrecked by injuries, leaky defense and a string of embarrassing losses. The blue bloods from Tobacco Road still have one NIT title, which came in 1971.

Every time North Carolina got close in the second half, Dayton had a response. Tar Heels guard Marcus Ginyard missed a contested layup that could have tied it at 59, and Paul Williams hit one of his four 3s on the other end with 7:46 left. A 3-pointer by Graves cut UNC’s deficit to 67-63 with 3:37 remaining, but Chris Johnson countered with a 3 of his own and a follow-up dunk to put Dayton up by nine with 2:50 to go. North Carolina, which committed 15 turnovers, never got closer than five the rest of the way. “Our guys played with great toughness and desire,” Gregory said. “We answered everything they threw at us.” This was Dayton’s 22nd appearance in the NIT, second only to St. John’s (27). The Flyers also won it in 1962.

Of course, those days have been long gone, since the NCAA decided to make their championship a gathering of 65 of the finest teams and/or individual conference champions in the nation, leaving the scraps for the N.I.T.  It seems that time, and the need to maximize television and marketing profits, stands still for no one. The N.I.T. has become an anachronism, at best and is now rumored to be on its last legs as the fervor grows for the NCAA to expand the national championships to close to 100 participating schools. Talk about watering down the product but that’s for another time and place.

But, the old girl, this N.I.T., was still standing tonight and for the college basketball teams that didn’t get the invite to the Big Dance as one of those 65 teams, this tourney has become a very good consolation prize. These teams may not have chosen the NIT as their preferred way to end their seasons but if they make it to the Garden, it sure as hell makes for a fun couple of nights to become champions on the last Thursday night of the season, as opposed to the final Monday night when the whole country tunes in to watch the crowning of the national basketball champion.

There were 32 teams invited to the NIT this year and tonight, we had the final four of those 32 come in and take over the Garden to decide who would play in Thursday’s championship game. For schools such as Rhode Island and the University of Mississippi and Dayton, this is still a prestigious event that adds to their teams’ legacies. For the other team among the four, the North Carolina Tar Heels, this is a tough place to be playing at the end of March. Given their national championships and Atlantic Coast Conference championships, and the legendary players that have worn the powder blue uniforms with top of the line results, this wasn’t what North Carolina coach Roy Williams had in mind.

“You know, I have a great appreciation of this tournament,” Williams told me after his team held on to defeat Rhode Island in overtime,  68-67. “I have a great appreciation of the tradition, the history of the N.I.T. If you win this tournament, you have to feel good about it.”

I wondered how this compares to the “other” tournament, for his team.

“Now, is that your goal at the start of the season? Let’s be honest, that’s not our goal at the start of the season, but we put ourselves here. And so, it would be a very positive thing for us because we didn’t play as well as we needed to play. We’ve accepted that and have tried to do the best we possibly could in this game and this tournament. So, from that viewpoint, it would be a positive spin on it but it would not be our dream and our goal.”

Coming off of last season’s national championship, the school’s fifth in its history and second in five seasons under Williams, the Tar Heels are not used to playing among the Daytons and the Rhode Islands of the college basketball universe at season’s end but, here they are.

“We enjoyed playing the last Monday night of the season last year and you know, we’re playing the last Thursday night this year. Playing the last Monday night is better, there’s no question about that. But I do believe if you’re playing and if they keep playing until there’s only one team standing, it’s very important to be that one team standing.”

Good spin by Roy.

As for his game, Deon Thompson had 16 points and 13 rebounds, helping North Carolina survive a frantic final few seconds and defeat Rhode Island in overtime.

Will Graves added 14 points and Tyler Zeller had 13 for the Tar Heels (20-16), who will try to make bittersweet history against Dayton by becoming the first school to follow a national title with an NIT championship at Madison Square Garden.

In tonight’s first game, Dayton held off Mississippi 68-63 behind Chris Johnson’s 22 points, including five key free throws down the stretch.

With Ole Miss alum and New York Giant quarterback Eli Manning sitting behind the Mississippi bench, the Flyers (24-12) slowed Mississippi’s high scoring offense and advanced to the N.I.T. championship game against the Tar Heels for the first time since winning their second NIT title in 1968, when Don May was their star player.

Terrico White had 19 points for the second-seeded Rebels (24-11), eliminated in the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden for the second time in three years.

Lavin has been an analyst for ESPN the past six seasons. He coached UCLA for seven seasons from 1996 to 2003, leading the Bruins to the Elite Eight once and the Sweet 16 five times. Lavin would fit the Red Storm’s desire to hire a name coach with personality and charisma that can capture the New York market as it tries to become more relevant in the city. Lavin would likely hire a New York-based staff to help recruit the area.

St. John’s is searching for a replacement for Norm Roberts, who Monasch fired after the Red Storm lost at Memphis in the first round of the NIT. The Red Storm made overtures to Florida’s Billy Donovan and made an actual offer from the school to Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt, but was turned down.

Last Friday, St. John’s interviewed Boston College’s Al Skinner, who remains a candidate. Saturday, the Red Storm interviewed Siena’s Fran McCaffery, who later took the Iowa head coaching job. A potential interview with Temple’s Fran Dunphy never materialized and there have been attempts to get Monasch with Rhode Island’s Jim Baron, whose Rams are in New York for the NIT final four this week, and Cornell’s Steve Donahue, whose Big Red lost to Kentucky in the Sweet 16 in Syracuse Thursday.

Lavin was working at ESPN in Bristol, Conn., over the weekend and was expected to stay in the area so he could meet with Monasch. Lavin was on the verge of accepting the NC State job in 2006 in a whirlwind time for the Wolfpack after Herb Sendek went to Arizona State. The Wolfpack offered the job to then-Memphis coach John Calipari who turned it down. Lavin ultimately withdrew and stayed at ESPN. But Lavin has been coaching more in the offseason, doing clinics overseas and in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Northeastern’s Bill Coen has emerged as one of the top candidates to replace McCaffery at Siena if the Saints opt to go outside of McCaffery’s staff for a replacement. Siena is considered the top job in the MAAC with its passionate fan base in Albany and NCAA tournament success.

Instead of allowing schools from low-ranked mid-major conferences to get into the Big Dance, generally as sacrificial lambs from their non-lofty perches at the 16th seeds, let’s see if we can make this tournament much more competitive. Instead of opening round games that end up as 30 point blowouts, the NCAA should develop other types of measurements and requirements for the best 64 teams in the nation to earn the right to play for a national title.

Now, admittedly, there are probably no more than 3-5 schools who can truly feel confident they will still be standing when it comes down to the national quarterfinals later this month but at least, the games themselves in the opening rounds will provide more drama, more potential for upset specials, and greater tension. And, as we all know, these indelible facets to the quality of the games will lead to better tv ratings and more money being paid by sponsors to reach the broader audience.

I love to watch mid-major schools compete at all sports. I particularly appreciate the notion and concept of being a student-athlete who plays for the love of the games and perhaps, some extra work-study money from the university as opposed to full scholarship players who are basically pros by the time they’re competing for a multi-million dollar athletic department whose budget is similar in size and scope to any professional team in most sports. When a kid is quarterbacking a Big 10 school in front of 100,000 paying fans every Saturday, believe me, he’s as responsible for filling up the revenue coffers of his school as any paid athlete.

Other than the increasingly rare upset by a mid-major over a top 100 school, the drama is gone from those 1-16 seeds or 2-14 seeds playing each other. Those guaranteed conference champions from the smaller conferences now have almost zero chance of competing well, let alone winning. For every example of an American University squad holding a 14 point lead over Villanova with 11 minutes to go in an opening round game, there is the more typical blowout scenario that has announcers speaking to the “courage” of the “scrappy” Eagles or Tigers or Bison from the Patriot League.

Why not have those schools ranked by the RPI from number 65 through 130 compete in the N.I.T., or another tournament by a different name, for another kind of title. Let these kids all feel they have a legitimate shot at a championship or at least, at competing on a high level with schools of similar sizes. Let all the universities and colleges who have won most of their games but for lack of strength of schedule, size of conference, limitations of financial benefits available to the power conferences cannot possibly have a chance at winning a game or two go into the post-season with more than a semblance of confidence.

In a stirring game between the 22^nd ranked Hoyas of Georgetown and Bob Huggins’ seventh ranked team, West Virginia came away with a 60-58 win when their leading scorer, Da’Sean Butler hit a shot in the lane with 4.2 seconds in the game to break a tie and give West Virginia the first Big East championship in its storied history.

“We wanted to win this for our state first because the people there love us so much and support us so much,” Butler said. “I definitely know it means the world to them. … That was our main concern, not letting the state down.”

There was no doubt as to where the ball would go when West Virginia took the ball out with nine seconds to go. Butler has made it a habit of winning games on last shots, having done so five times this season, including last Thursday night on a 25 foot buzzer beater against Cincinnati. As Cincinnati did in that game, Georgetown opted not to have any player on the ball when it was being passed in from out of bounds. Butler got a clear look  at the pass, took three dribbles to his left to get into the lane and flung an awkward looking shot towards the basket. It rolled around and dropped in as the West Virginia throng in a delirious Madison Square Garden exploded.

“We ran the same play that we set up for the Cincinnati game,” Butler said. “They kind of overplayed one side and went the other way. I came up to the top of the key, and I had to come get the ball and they kind of switched. I think Monroe was on me. And I think he had a feeling I was going to shoot a 3. I had a little hesitation, went around him and Freeman stepped up, and I had a little hop step and scooped the layup off the glass and it fell.”

Georgetown took the ball out without any timeouts as their leading scorer, Chris Wright grabbed the pass and sped upcourt to try to tie the score or hit a three point shot to give Georgetown the win. Wright’s sole purpose was to go right to the hoop, never thinking of taking a game-winning three-pointer.

“I was just thinking to get to the basket, try to finish, get a layup,” Wright said. “I had time on the clock, I wasn’t thinking about a pull-up or anything, just get to the basket.”

The game was close throughout  with West Virginia generally holding slim leads but it was in the final minutes when the tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

Austin Freeman, who was diagnosed last week with diabetes, hit a 3 for Georgetown with 51 seconds left to tie the game at 56.

Butler missed a 3-point attempt about 15 seconds later and West Virginia was able to get the rebound. Wright fouled Joe Mazzulla out near midcourt with 27 seconds to go and he made both to break the tie.

“I made a mistake,” Wright said in admitting he hadn’t looked at the scoreboard.

Wright soon made up for his faux pas when he scored on a nice spin move with 17 seconds left for the game’s final tie. That set the stage for Butler’s heroics.

This win may have set West Virginia up to be one of the four schools on top of the bracket, as a number one seed in the upcoming NCAA national championships, aka, March Madness.

“We have 18 top 100 wins. We have nine top 50 wins. Our non-league RPI was second. Our strength of schedule is going to be 1. We’re going to end up in the top two or three in the RPI,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said, reciting his team’s qualifications for a No. 1 seeding. “They say do those things, we’ve done those things.”

“We are what we are,” Huggins added. “We’re just going to keep competing. If the day comes we’re going to lose in the next few weeks, we’re going to go down swinging.”

The one thing Georgetown does know about its seeding in the NCAA tournament is that it will be better than the No. 8 it managed in the conference tournament.

“It’s hard to analyze that right now just because I’m extremely disappointed, we have three guys with me that are extremely disappointed, we have a locker room down the hall with a bunch of other guys that are disappointed,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III said when asked about his team’s NCAA prospects. “That said, I don’t think this group ever lost confidence in what we’re doing, lost confidence in each other.”

Last night’s quarterfinal games guaranteed that three of the top four seeds in this league were not going to appear again. Syracuse, the league’s number one seed led by Wesley Johnson, the Big East’s Player of the Year, was put out by Georgetown. Pittsburgh, the number 2 seeded team was erased by Notre Dame’s new “Burn” offense, in which it runs the 35 second shot clock down to the very end before they take a shot. Villanova, the number four seed featuring All-American Scottie Reynolds said bye bye at the hands of Marquette.  Only West Virginia, the fourth seed, remains among the top four Big East teams.

As competitive and great as these games have been, can you name two players from the remaining colleges in this tournament? You can’t? It’s okay, neither can I.

Let’s see, there’s Harangody from Notre Dame. He puts up big numbers, doesn’t he? West Virginia? You got me. Marquette has a kid named Lazar. I think that’s his first name. He’s good though so Lazar just might become a household name, someday. Georgetown has that 6’11” center. No, not Patrick or Dikembe. It’s Greg, Greg Monroe. Remember that one, he’s a keeper. They also have the kid who just found out he has a form of diabetes. Austin Freeman. I remember that one. Kids that age shouldn’t get sick. But, they do, sometimes.

The coaches are the faces of these programs, as is usually the case in college basketball. Georgetown’s head man, John Thompson III, is famous for having a famous father who also used to be Georgetown’s head man with the same name. Younger Thompson is not as tall. And he hasn’t won as much as his dad, yet. 

West Virginia’s Bob Huggins looks like Elvis and acts like he’s been here before. That’s because he has been here before with a long career as a player and coach in the college game. Played at West Virginia in 1975, coached at Cincinnati, coached at Kansas State, and came back home to West Virginia. Thirty-four years and still ticking, and that’s after a recent heart attack. The doctors told him to take off weight and live a less stressful life. So he changed jobs, from one Big East meat grinder of a job to another Big East meat grinder of a job. And, on last look, Huggins has not taken off weight. He’s a lifer.

Marquette has a buzz-saw of a coach by the name of Buzz Williams. Buzz received his nickname as an assistant coach at Navarro College, a two-year public institution consisting of a main campus located in Corsicana, Texas. He “buzzed” around the men’s basketball team so often the coach gave him the nickname. And now, Buzz is on the big stage.

And, finally, Notre Dame’s head coach is someone named Mike Brey, a veteran of the college basketball wars having been an assistant to Mike Krzyzewski at Duke for eight seasons, head coach at Delaware for five seasons and three seasons tucked away in the record books as head coach at Notre Dame.

So, these are the faces of the Big East’s final four teams. The games have been competitive and exciting throughout the past four days of games at New York’s Madison Square Garden and tonight’s semi-finals should be terrific.

I just wish I could name more than a couple of players from each team.

West Virginia became the only one of the conference’s top four seeds to advance to the semifinals when Da’Sean Butler took an inbounds pass and banked in a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Mountaineers (No. 6 ESPN/USA Today, No. 7 AP) a 54-51 victory over Cincinnati on Thursday night.

The third-seeded Mountaineers (25-6) will face seventh-seeded Notre Dame, which beat second-seeded Pittsburgh, on Friday night.

The other semifinal will have eighth-seeded Georgetown, which eliminated top-seeded and third-ranked Syracuse, against fifth-seeded Marquette. The Golden Eagles beat fourth-seeded and 10th-ranked Villanova.

The top four teams in the 16-member conference were given double byes to the quarterfinals. Combined with last season’s tournament, the first when all the schools were invited to New York, the top four seeds have a 3-5 record in the quarterfinals.

“I’m not a fan of the double bye but I don’t know that that had that much to do it with it,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said of the day of upsets. “We played pretty well early. … I thought we had a chance to kind of break their back and we kind of let up.”

The Mountaineers did take the opportunity to break the hearts of the Bearcats.

“Just right now I feel really bad for my players,” Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said. “They deserved a much better ending. Win, lose or draw, it’s a tough way to lose a game when a guy banks in a shot.”

Cincinnati (18-15) had a chance to win the game, but Dion Dixon lost the ball along the sideline with 3.1 seconds remaining to give West Virginia the final shot.

“He just got it in a hurry,” Cronin said. “We would have liked him to catch it. … He turned and dribbled it too fast. He was out of control before he even put it on the floor. I feel bad for him. He’s devastated right now.”

Butler finished with 15 points, while Lance Stephenson led the Bearcats with 19 points.

Stephenson, the conference’s Rookie of the Year, tied the game at 51 on a 3-pointer with 42 seconds to play. Following a timeout, West Virginia couldn’t get a shot off and turned the ball over on a shot-clock violation with 6.4 seconds to go.

Dixon, covered by Butler, couldn’t control the ball as he headed toward the sideline and turned it over with 3.1 seconds left. Devin Ebanks then inbounded the ball to Butler, who took one move and let it fly over an outstretched Stephenson while straddling the NBA’s 3-point line.

When the ball went through, Dixon dropped to his knees in front of the Cincinnati bench.

“Honestly, I was supposed to just catch the ball and get a couple of dribbles inside the 3-point line,” Butler said. “When I got the ball he kind of pressed up on me. So I kind of lost my balance, and by the time I squared up, I only had time to take one dribble instead of two or three. And when I took one dribble I put it up. I felt good. I saw it hit the glass, I said, ‘Oh it’s fine.’ It fell right in there. I said, ‘All right, it went in. Thank God.”

Stephenson said: “I tried my hardest to strip him but he made an incredible move and an incredible shot. I was all over him, nothing I could do. I couldn’t do nothing different. I actually fouled him.”

Kevin Jones had 17 points for West Virginia, which has won six of its last seven games and is in the semifinals for the third straight year. The Mountaineers have reached the finals once, losing to Syracuse in 2005.

Cincinnati made history by picking up its first wins in the tournament, 69-68 over Rutgers in the opening round and 69-66 over Louisville in the second. The Bearcats’ run was more stunning considering they lost five of six to close the regular season.

West Virginia won the teams’ only regular-season meeting, 74-68 on Feb. 27.

Both teams struggled offensively with West Virginia having the better shooting effort at 35 percent (21 of 60). That mark included going 4 of 20 from 3-point range.

The Bearcats shot 33.3 percent (17 of 51) and were 5 of 14 on 3s.

What was left of the sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden was worried as regulation wore down, many remembering the final game of last year’s quarterfinals. That one turned out to be Syracuse’s 127-117 six-overtime victory against Connecticut. 

The 11th-seeded Bearcats (18-14), who had never won a game in the tournament until Tuesday’s opening-round win over Rutgers, advanced to the quarterfinals against third-seeded West Virginia (No. 6 ESPN/USA Today, No. 7 AP).

“Well, obviously, a big win for our team,” said Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin. “We attacked the basket tonight. Guys did a great job in the second half and we ended up with 40 points in the paint.”

Edgar Sosa had 28 points for the defending champion Cardinals (20-12), but he was stripped by Vaughn as he was headed toward a possible game-tying 3-point attempt.

Yancy Gates had 16 points for Cincinnati, which finished with a 54-33 rebound advantage, including 28-9 on the offensive end. Vaughn had 10 points

Reginald Delk hit a 3 with 9.7 seconds left to bring Louisville within 67-66 before Vaughn’s free throws made it a three-point game.

Roberts, now in his seventh year has been credited with getting his kids to play hard but the wins have still been hard to string together for the “little school from Queens,” as Roberts likes to describe the university. The questions about his job security have grown as his teams continue to be outclassed and out-recruited by other Big East schools.

Roberts is well aware of the buzz over whether St. Johns will offer him a new contract but he feels he’s gotten the program back on track. He took over a decimated program on the verge of NCAA penalty, is 60-76 overall and only 23-52 in Big East play.  He said he spoke to Father Harrington, St. Johns’ President, as recently as about two weeks ago at a board of directors meeting and that the university president was 100-percent supportive.

“I feel better about my team than I ever have,” said Roberts. “We’ve taken major steps to getting better and we’re going to be pretty good next year. We just have to continue to grow.”

“I don’t think anybody could forsee six years up the road and tell where a program will be,” he said. “I think we’re further along than when I first got here. We were rock bottom playing in the best league in America. I think we’ve got a chance to be one of the better teams in the league next year.”

St. Johns, under legendary coach Lou Carnesecca, was able to hold onto kids like Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson, Walter Berry, Bill Wennington, Malik Sealy and many others who went on to productive NBA careers. Under Roberts, they have yet to produce an All-American or an NBA-caliber player.

“Everybody thinks that St. Johns got every New York City kid, they never did,” Roberts said. “I say this all the time and people don’t want to listen to it but it’s right. Ed Pinckney went to Villanova, we got Walter Berry. So nobody worried about Ed Pinckney going to Villanova. Kenny Smith went to North Carolina, we got Mark Jackson so nobody worried about Kenny Smith going to Carolina. Pearl Washington went to Syracuse.

“What we have to do is get the kid that fits us and then when we get him, we have to make him as good as he can possibly be. Then nobody will be asking those questions anymore. You can’t keep them here in NY just like you can’t keep all the great players in Chicago. The landscape of basketball is totally different than it was 20 years ago. With AAU basketball, by the time they’re 18, they’ve been to North Carolina and L.A. 15 times, so it’s no big deal. So for a kid to go there for college, it’s no big deal. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, and I know I’m dating myself, when someone would tell me to go to New Jersey, I would say I don’t know those people over there. I’m from NYC and I wanted to stay home. So, it’s a totally different landscape.”

Roberts does have the respect of his coaching bretheren in the Big East. After St. Johns blew out Jim Calhoun’s Connecticut team, Calhoun went public with his admiration for the job Roberts was doing. At the same time, the wily Calhoun had to know his public support for Roberts could have a positive affect on St. Johns’ decision-making when it comes to retaining Roberts.

After today’s game, Buzz Williams, Marquette’s head coach supported Roberts as well, at the post-game press conference.

“Coach Roberts doesn’t get the credit he’s deserving of for how hard his team plays,” said Williams. “Not that I’m old, but I always trust our players to tell me the truth about other players. If you were to ask our players who is the hardest playing team in the league, they would tell you St. Johns. I thought they were the hardest playing team today.”