When Coach Roberts was hired I believe we all thought his main attribute was recruiting. After all, he was Coach Self's main recruiting coach at a few schools.
So what happened? As others have stated in the past, it was really Coach Self's reputation that was the key selling point, much like it will be for Coach Lavin.
However, I would have thought that Coach Roberts would have been skilled enough to land (and keep) some top 100 players. The critical time for him was in his first two years when he could have possibly sold recruits on a brand new basketball image at St. John's, much like Coach Lavin has done in less than a year.
We all know that Coach Roberts failed in those initial two years. For the rest of his tenure, I agree that he acted like a mid major school coach. All the stuff he espoused about us not being able to recruit was garbage. It was not the school, but the man.