To be fair, it’s not like these coaches don’t know the drill when they accept the position, and they get very well compensated for all the hassles of the job. In some cases, as with St. John’s Norm Roberts, there is added pressure because of the stigma of the previous regime. Sex and pay-off scandals ruined Mike Jarvis’ tenure, and Roberts’ ability to put space between St. John’s basketball and the image problems of the early part of this decade has been laudable, and it has also given Roberts some leeway on the court.

Roberts is now in his sixth season and may be facing the most crucial on-court juncture of his tenure. A season that began brightly with a 9-1 record, including a strong performance in a loss at Duke and wins over Siena and Temple has now toppled over after the 15-point home loss to Providence on Sunday. The 0-2 Big East start has made thoughts of an NCAA Tournament appearance wistful, and now the question is whether Roberts will win enough this season to keep his job.

This is a season set up for improvement at St. John’s with Roberts’ talented 2007 recruiting class maturing into juniors and two Juco transfers added to the rotation. With this merging of talent and experience came expectations, though, especially after a long run of lean seasons. And with expectations come consequences when they are not met.

As always, the problem for Roberts’ team has primarily been on offense. In 13 games entering Sunday, Providence’s defense had been so bad that just two opponents — Brown and Bryant — failed to manage a point per possession. Brown and Bryant are probably the two worst teams the Friars have played this year, and St. John’s joined their dubious company with 59 points in 73 possessions.

As good as D.J. Kennedy has been carrying the load in his junior season, the offense is still coming up short at the crucial moments, ranking 13th in the Big East in offensive efficiency. No Roberts team has finished better than 13th during his tenure, and it’s hard to be competitive when struggling so much at one end of the floor.

Roberts has had many misses on the recruiting trail, but the whiff that may eventually doom his reign is Sylven Landesberg. The Queens prep product had narrowed his choices to St. John’s and Virginia before deciding to head to Charlottesville two winters ago. One could hardly blame him for wanting to matriculate at such a terrific school on a beautiful campus with the Cavs fresh off a 20-win season. Still, the smooth 6-foot-6 slasher was from Roberts’ backyard, and he needed exactly the kind of offensive production that Landesberg could bring.

The Landesberg situation is a microcosm for the primary problem for Roberts at St. John’s. He’s brought in players that have graduated, been good citizens and played hard on the floor, but they just haven’t been talented enough. Justin Burrell, Sean Evans, Paris Horne and Malik Boothe have all had stretches of good to very good play in their careers, but they’re really just role players. When a coach is forced to move a role player into a position of greater importance, he ends up with teams that go 6-12 in conference. This junior class is reminiscent of a conference foe’s, one that couldn’t prevent its coach’s firing two years ago.

In Tim Welsh’s last season at Providence two years ago, a team full of juniors led by Geoff McDermott and Weyinmi Efejuku started the season well out of conference to raise expectations. In conference, though, the Friars started 0-2, including a disastrous loss at DePaul. The Friars finished 6-12 in conference and 15-16 on the season, and Welsh’s tenure ended with a first-round Big East Tournament loss to West Virginia.

Can Roberts avoid the same fate? The problem is that we don’t know the standard he must achieve, and he may not either. If the goal is an NCAA Tournament berth, then Sunday’s loss was likely crippling. If the goal is to be in the mix for the NCAA Tournament into March, then St. John’s has a shot to meet that goal. Still, a 6-12 or 7-11 conference record seems more likely than the eight or nine league wins SJU will need to stay relevant into March.

The St. John’s administration, led by its president, Rev. Donald Harrington, could sell eight conference wins and an NIT berth — which would be Roberts’ first into a major postseason tournament — as a marked improvement on the road to an NCAA berth in 2011. With a full team of players coming back next season, 2010-11 would become Roberts’ ultimate litmus test.

For one second, let’s assume that St. John’s does do just well enough for Roberts to keep his job, say 19-14, including a win in either the Big East Tournament or the NIT. Even with a seventh season, I still get that nagging sensation about how this all will end — somewhere short of the NCAA Tournament and with Roberts out of a job. If and when that happens, the reason will be the same for which Welsh was fired at Providence — he didn’t bring in enough talent.

The Catch-22 of college recruiting is that it takes success to attract good talent, but it usually takes good talent to be successful. There’s an inertia involved in getting programs started or, in Roberts’ case, restarted, and the coach has never been able to put together a team that could turn an object at rest into one in motion. As a result, he’s seen the best New York City players head to Villanova, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and elsewhere.

For all the positive personal and professional characteristics Roberts has — and he has many — he hasn’t been able to turn St. John’s into a competitive basketball program, never reaching .500 in conference or surpassing 16 wins overall. At a certain point, beyond the good grades and citizenship marks, the bottom line becomes too hard to ignore. Roberts has 16 more games to make the bottom line something that doesn’t have to be ignored for him to remain employed.

Indeed, St. John’s looked far better in its offensive sets than Providence, knocking down jumpers and navigating the Friars’ zone for easy buckets. At the other end of the floor, Providence couldn’t hit a shot. Even its nice drives ended in rim outs, and mostly the Friars were missing low-percentage looks. As evidence of the disparity in offensive flow, the Red Storm had 19 assists on 25 made field goals for the game, while Providence had just 13 on 22 makes.

But then there were the turnovers, which would be the game’s storyline. Instead of being behind by 10 or 12 points, Providence trailed by just four with 7:50 to play, because the Friars continued to force St. John’s miscues, and often the miscues — a season-high 23 giveaways — weren’t forced at all.

“Our three-quarter court [press] seemed to disrupt them a little bit, whether they would turn it over or, in the half court, they wouldn’t get set in their alignment,” said Providence head coach Keno Davis. “That’s what pressure does — you have to worry about turning it over, and sometimes it takes you out of your offense.”

There are three ways to make up for a large discrepancy in shooting percentages. One is at the foul line — make a lot of free-throws. Another is in rebounding — recover a lot of those misses. The third is in ball-handling — force a lot more turnovers than you commit. Providence spent the first 80 percent of the game mastering the last of the three — the Friars forced turnovers on one-third of St. John’s possessions while committing just 10. Providence then spent the final eight minutes getting to the line and crashing the offensive glass, managing the perfect trifecta.

After Dwight Hardy converted a rare Providence turnover into an easy layup to give St. John’s a 54-50 lead with 7:50 to play, the next 14 possessions saw the game turn dramatically.

The Friars had managed just 50 points over the game’s first 58 possessions, but over the subsequent 14 possessions, they scored 24 points, flying past a shell-shocked Red Storm team in front of 5,003 mostly stunned and depressed fans.

Over those same 14 possessions, St. John’s scored just four points and none until PC had taken a 64-54 lead. The final points of the 14-0 run came on Jamine Peterson’s and-1 with 3:47 to play, the sophomore’s second in less than a minute. This one was off another St. John’s turnover, a careless pass that Brian McKenzie intercepted at midcourt before finding the game’s offensive star, Sharaud Curry. Curry got the ball to Peterson on the baseline for Sharaud’s fifth assist of the night — he also had a game-high 26 points — and his pass led to Peterson’s finish and put the game to bed.

Peterson scored just five points before the decisive run but had nine during it — this after seeing a noticeable amount of pine early in the second half.

“I was frustrated,” said the Brooklyn native when asked why he was sent to the bench. “We weren’t moving the ball, and I felt like guys were being selfish.”

“We need him on the floor. He had six rebounds today, but he’s averaging 10 a game this season,” said Davis. “We just wanted him to refocus on rebounding. Sometimes you can do that by giving a guy an extended break on the bench.”

Whatever the reason for the temporary benching, for the game’s last eight minutes, St. John’s saw the Peterson who was one of the league’s most exciting interior scorers and rebounders in the pre-conference season.

And they needed him, since SJU thwarted Providence’s attempts to create open space on the perimeter. As a result, the Friars made a concerted effort to drive the lane in the second half. While that strategy didn’t lead to much success on 2-pointers — just 10-for-26 in the second half after shooting 5-for-21 in the first half, it did get Providence to the line, where the Friars made 16-of-20 in the last 20, including 8-for-9 during the decisive conclusion. Both Curry and Vincent Council, who had six assists of his own, were able to break down their defenders to create situations where St. John’s was forced to foul.

“St. John’s did a good job taking us out of some of the sets that I wanted to look at,” said Davis, who asked his team to focus on getting to the basket and force the issue rather than run designed sets in the second half.

After Curry hit a few early perimeter shots, St. John’s elected to put taller defenders on him, as Paris Horne and Omari Lawrence saw spells defending Curry, who is listed at 5-foot-10. Both players have about six inches on the fifth-year senior, who used his superior quickness to his advantage.

“Definitely,” said Curry when asked if he saw the taller defenders as an opportunity to get in the lane. “I think they were kind of in between playing me for the drive or the shot, and I was just try to get all the way to the basket,” something he did effectively, most notably on a key drive past Horne and over Justin Brownlee to give Providence a 61-54 lead with four minutes to play. Curry also nailed 9-of-10 free-throw attempts, many coming after he was fouled on drives into the paint. It should be noted that Malik Boothe, the player best equipped to defend Curry — and perhaps limit the turnovers as well — was out with a groin injury.

Along with their advantage on points off turnovers (21-4) and points at the foul line (23-5), the Friars cemented the win by exploiting St. John’s on the Red Storm’s defensive glass. Providence had 16 offensive rebounds, which is not a particularly notable total considering the 48 rebounding opportunities, but six came in the game’s closing minutes, as Bilal Dixon began to dominate around the tin. The freshman stuffed the statsheet with seven points, eight rebounds — four on offense — five blocks and three steals in 29 minutes.

Without a dependable big man behind him this season, the 6-foot-9 Dixon has often put his team in a bad spot by getting in early foul trouble, and he committed a foul just 55 seconds into the game. He left the game for about a minute and never committed another foul after returning, despite being the only obstacle between St. John’s and an open lane.

When asked about the rebounding troubles down the stretch, Norm Roberts responded simply: “Frustration,” he said. “Guys were frustrated and didn’t focus on blocking out.”

The frustration surely stemmed from all the turnovers but also from the inability to put the Friars away when St. John’s had its opportunities.

Though not as noteworthy as the 24-5 Providence run to end proceedings, a 12-5 stretch in the final four minutes of the first half was equally essential to PC’s victory. SJU held a 28-20 lead after D.J. Kennedy found Sean Evans with one of Kennedy’s six assists.

But, of the Red Storm’s final nine first-half possessions, five ended in turnovers, many of the careless variety. Providence, gifted a second breath after shooting so poorly for most of the first half, got six points from the foul line and knocked down a couple of 3-pointers — one by McKenzie, the other by Curry — to narrow the deficit to one, 33-32, at the intermission. Despite shooting at a 63.0 eFG clip in the first half compared to its opponents’ 37.7, St. John’s had allowed the underdog to hang around, and that proved to be a costly mistake.

When asked about his team’s 30 percent field-goal shooting in the first half, Davis quipped, “We were at 30 percent for the whole game.” Indeed, Providence won by 15 despite shooting just 33.3 percent (40.2 eFG) for the game.

The Red Storm showed no hangover after the bad finish to the first half, getting out quickly in the second, again leading by eight at 46-38 with 13:46 to play. Davis found himself without Curry or Peterson on the floor for a long stretch, and St. John’s took advantage.

Kennedy was especially incisive with his passing, which led to the aforementioned six assists. He also had a pair of blocks, two steals and 11 rebounds to lead St. John’s. Indeed, it’s unfortunate for Kennedy, who was the best player on the floor over his 35 minutes, that his team couldn’t hold on to the ball well enough to win.

To be fair, with four turnovers, Kennedy wasn’t immune to the team-wide disease on Sunday, and the Friars quickly evened the score with a 10-2 run. The stretch included the Friars’ only two second-half 3-pointers, both from McKenzie, who had 12.

A couple of buckets from Brownlee and the fastbreak layup from Hardy put St. John’s back in front, but the Red Storm then missed seven field-goal attempts, two free-throw attempts and committed three turnovers across its next seven possessions. The scoreboard showed the Friars now up by 10, and the game was lost.

In this battle of two Catholic schools with rich basketball traditions, perhaps it’s best to look at the Gospel of Matthew for the game’s ultimate truth.

“Men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken,” Jesus is quoted as saying in chapter 12.

The Red Storm players weren’t careless with their words but rather with the basketball on Sunday. Their judgment came immediately and harshly in the form of a 15-point loss and an 0-2 start to Big East play.

When Roberts brought in a large junior class three seasons ago, it was this set of players that figured to make or break his tenure. D.J. Kennedy and Justin Burrell were the two players who appeared most likely to become offensive standouts as freshmen in 2007-08. The team offense was simply wretched, but Kennedy managed to hit 48.5 percent of his 2-pointers and grab a decent share of offensive rebounds. Burrell was much more active in the offense, but his 43 percent 2-point percentage was not a fortuitous sign.

Last season, a new challenger emerged when Paris Horne became a major part of a marginally improved St. John’s offense. Horne was mediocre on his many 3-pointers (33.5 percent on 182 attempts), but like Kennedy the year before, Horne flourised inside the arc, hitting 51.3 percent of his 2-pointers, a terrific figure for a 6-foot-3 guard. Kennedy saw his interior efficiency plummet (43.6 percent on 2’s), but he replaced those misses with a lot of made free throws. Burrell hit a few more of his 2’s (45.0 percent) but continued to struggle with turnovers, especially for a player not asked to handle the ball.

This season, with his team in need of a go-to scorer, Kennedy has been nothing short of phenomenal. He’s been about 20 percent more active in the offense and still much more efficient at the same time. The key has been his ability to get to the line. He hits 79 percent of his free throws and gets fouled about six times per 40 minutes on the floor. Kennedy has also gotten his 2-point percentage back up — to 61.4 percent — and has even shown range from deep, knocking down threes at a 44.8-percent rate, this after making exactly one-third of his 3-point attempts in each of his first two seasons.

Kennedy is part of an exclusive club among Big East players this season. The 12 players below have played in at least two-thirds of their teams’ minutes, sport offensive ratings of at least 110 (100 is average) and are responsible for at least 23 percent of their teams possessions when on the floor (all figures are through Saturday’s game and courtesy Kenpom.com).

* Pts/100 refers to the number of points each player accounts for per 100 team possessions.

If you narrowed this list down to the players who manage a 120 O-Rating and 24-percent possession thresholds, the list is just Harangody, Hazell and Kennedy. When you consider that Kennedy leads his team in defensive rebounds and is tied for second in steals, it’s clear that he is having an all-Big East first two months of the season. The offensive ratings for Kennedy and all of the other players on this list will get lower and lower when conference play begins at the end of the month and the quality of competition increases, but Kennedy’s efficiency is not a mirage.

Horne has not followed up his sophomore season as successfully as his left-handed teammate. The 2-point shooting and assists are down; the turnovers are up. Horne has been phased into a supporting role, and junior-college transfer Dwight Hardy is replacing a lot of what Horne brought last season. Horne did have 14 points in Sunday’s win over Fordham, but even then he made just 5-of-13 shots. Still, he was more active, perhaps a sign of an impending emergence from his early-season malaise.

Burrell has faded into the background as primarily a defensive presence who grabs far too few rebounds for his 6-8, 235-pound frame. He’s missed the last two games with a high-ankle sprain, but with Sean Evans replacing much of his production last season and junior-college transfer Justin Brownlee playing well at forward this season, one could argue that Burrell has become surplus to needs. Kennedy, Hardy, Evans and Brownlee give Roberts more dependable offensive options than he ever has at St. John’s, though a resurgence from Horne wouldn’t hurt. (Anthony Mason Jr. may be cleared for individual workouts as early as next week, but it would appear unlikely that he’d be able to carry more than a supplemental role in his final season, and — not to kick a man when he’s down — he was never an efficient scorer anyway.)

With all the talk about offense, it’s important to be clear that this is still a defense-first team. Starting with the win over Siena on Nov. 27, St. John’s has allowed more than a point per possession just once, and that was in the loss to Duke. The St. John’s defense focuses primarily on suppressing opponents’ shooting, and the Red Storm excels here. SJU is particulary good at stifling opponents’ 3-pointers, led by Malik Boothe’s perimeter pressure. Dele Coker, Brownlee and Burrell also make sure opponents don’t get many free looks near the rim.

The question is where St. John’s goes from here. The Red Storm has a tricky couple of games between now and the start of the Big East season, which opens Dec. 31 at Georgetown. The Holiday Festival sees St. John’s play Hofstra and then, likely, Cornell. If St. John’s can navigate those games, then it will be in a position where a .500 conference record should send the Red Storm to the NCAA Tournament. Breaking even in conference would be a first for Norm Roberts at St. John’s, but it’s possible with a team that continues to play sound defense and now boasts an explosive scorer.

Red Storm overcomes drought, stuns Hoyas: Georgetown may have escaped Villanova with a win on Saturday, but no one who watched that game would have accused the Hoyas of playing well. Still, a win is a win, and with St. John’s and DePaul upcoming, the Hoyas didn’t figure to need their best performances to get to 8-10 in conference. But St. John’s had been playing better ball of late, and the Red Storm would have nothing to lose, and SJU didn’t lose, defeating Georgetown, 59-56 in overtime.

St. John’s played Georgetown tight for a half and managed to trail by just one at the break despite at least 12 first-half turnovers. Then, the Red Storm came out and missed its first 14 second-half field-goal attempts. Jason Clark’s 3-pointer put Georgetown up 45-30 with 10:43 to play causing announcer Don Criqui to say, “That might be the dagger,” and it did indeed appear that another romp was at hand. SJU hadn’t stayed within 10 points of Georgetown in five straight meetings since the last time the Red Storm won a matchup in February 2005.

But St. John’s hit some free throws, and Paris Horne finally made the Red Storm’s first field goal of the half at the 6:50 mark. The Red Storm missed its first 14 attempts from the field, but SJU was down by just 10 at that point.

Down the stretch, Norm Roberts mixed up his defenses, often employing a 1-3-1 zone to frustrate the Hoyas. On offense, Rob Thomas hit several big shots and free throws down the stretch to force overtime. His two free throws with two seconds left tied the game and forced overtime. Thomas entered the game as just a 54-percent free-throw shooter but hit all six attempts on Tuesday.

In overtime, St. John’s overcame a dubious intentional foul call on a Malik Boothe hack of Greg Monroe to gain the lead on key shots by Horne (16 points) and D.J. Kennedy. Justin Burrell’s rebound and slam with just seconds left put St. John’s up three, and DaJuan Summers’ long three at the buzzer wasn’t close.

As stunning as Notre Dame’s fall from the top-10 to out of the NCAAs is, Georgetown’s has been even swifter. The Hoyas, unlike the Irish, actually looked top-10 good after handing UConn its first loss of the season on a Dec. 29 demolition in Hartford.

But Georgetown lost seven of eight from mid-January to mid-February, including a five-point loss at Seton Hall and a sweep by Cincinnati. While the performance in Philadelphia on Saturday rightfully got Georgetown back in the NCAA Tournament discussion, the result was a mirage. The Hoyas continued to turn the ball over at an alarming rate and are helpless on the defensive glass. It took criminally sloppy play by Scottie Reynolds and the Wildcats down the stretch for the Hoyas to escape with the win.

On Tuesday, it was more of the same. Georgetown forced 19 turnovers, but most of those were in the game’s first 30 minutes. Once St. John’s started valuing the ball, Georgetown’s defense became much less effective, even against the relatively punchless Red Storm. St. John’s had 15 offensive rebounds, grabbing 43 percent of its misses to offset the poor shooting (40 percent eFG).

On the other end of the floor, the Hoyas were even more inept on their own glass, getting just 18 percent of their misses. Forwards Monroe and Summers combined to play 60 minutes and grab just one offensive board. The Hoyas also missed seven free throws in 16 attempts, a total that is especially painful in a game decided in overtime. Georgetown scored just six points from the moment of Clark’s big three-pointer until the end of regulation.

Just like Notre Dame, many in the national media found plenty of reason to overlook Georgetown’s obvious weaknesses, but the Hoyas continually played to the level of its opposition and ended up on the receiving end of four upset losses in conference.

The fourth of those losses probably eliminated Georgetown from serious discussion for an at-large berth. I suppose a win over DePaul and a run to the Big East Tournament final would gain the Hoyas significant consideration, but even that may not be enough. Moreover, anyone who has watched Georgetown play since the Jan. 17 loss at Duke would consider a deep Big East Tournament run to be wish-casting — if Summers can hit his jumpers and Monroe can hit the glass and Chris Wright can create off the dribble and the Hoyas can hang in on the defensive glass and continue to force a lot of turnovers… Wishes, horses.

Jones plays like Wilkins in upset of Bearcats: In Tampa, Dominique Jones showed why he makes South Florida dangerous in USF’s 70-59 win over Cincinnati on Tuesday. He displayed excessive offensive efficiency in a 30-point effort. Jones’ eFG was 78.1, including 5-of-6 on threes. Jones also led the Bulls in rebounds (8), free-throws made (5) and taken (8) and assists (5). The Lake Wales, Fla., product is one the best-kept secrets in the Big East, as the sophomore is a dynamic scorer and terrific all-around performer for the woeful Bulls

USF’s ability to knock down shots was the reason why the Bulls won this game. Stan Heath’s team shot 56.1 percent eFG as a team, with folks like Justin Leemow chipping in with three treys, and forwards Gus Gilchrist (13 points on 5-of-10 shooting) and Alex Rivas (10 on 3-of-4) providing the efficiency USF needed to score 1.22 points per possessions. That is the most efficient the Bulls’ offense has been since an 80-58 win at an awful DePaul team on Jan. 20.

The defensive breakdowns couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mick Cronin’s team. At 8-8 in conference entering Tuesday’s game, UC was squarely on the bubble but had games at USF and at home against Seton Hall to try to boost the record. Instead, his team’s defense was torched for the fourth time in five games, all losses. At least the other three came against Pitt, Louisville and Syracuse. This defensive performance was against the league’s 14th-rated offense.

Cincinnati now faces a scenario where a win over Seton Hall and a run to the Big East quarters likely won’t be enough to get a bid. In a year of resurgence in the Queen City, the loss to USF is a bitter pill to swallow.

Elsewhere on the bubble: Maryland had a six-point, second-half lead at home against Wake Forest but failed to hold on a hotly contested, 65-63 defeat. A win would have put Maryland on the precipice of clinching a bid, but now the Terps will need a win at Virginia over the weekend and a first-round ACC Tournament win, likely against North Carolina State.

Oklahoma State overcame several Kansas State runs to all but knock the Wildcats out of at-large consideration. At the same time, OSU tightened up its case with a ninth Big 12 win. A win at Oklahoma this weekend or a first-round Big 12 Tournament win (the latter being more likely) should seal a bid for Travis Ford in his first season in Stillwater. The Wildcats now have to defeat Colorado on Saturday and win at least two — perhaps three — in the Big 12 Tournament to have a strong case. K-State’s RPI remains a huge hurdle. Losses to Iowa and Oregon are big reasons why it’s rightfully poor.

In Iowa City, Ohio State barely averted being Iowa’s latest victim. Jermain Davis had a layup blocked and then saw his potential game-winning 3-pointer rim out in the final seconds, as the Buckeyes held on for a 65-63 win. Evan Turner missed a late free throw on the front end of a 1-and-1 that enabled Iowa to attempt the potential winner. The miss was one of the few things Turner did wrong all night, as he scored 22 points on 10-of-17 shooting with nine assists and five rebounds. OSU can sew up a bid with a home win over Northwestern on Sunday.

In the Mountain West, New Mexico moved into a tie for the conference lead with a 77-71 win over Utah. The Lobos’ Tony Danridge had his eighth-straight double-figure scoring performance with a season-high 29 points, including 13 free throws. Utah shot lights out (66.7 eFG) from the field but couldn’t overcome 18 turnovers. The win was a must-have for Steve Alford’s team, which had several puzzling losses in pre-conference play — UTEP at home by 13, Texas Tech by 12, UCF at home, Drake and VCU on a neutral court. But, with teams falling all around them, NMU will likely be among the last eight out in the next Bracket Junkie. The Lobos finish the conference season with a game at Wyoming and will likely need that plus a couple more in the Mountain West Tournament to get an at-large bid.