IT didn’t take long for the sentiment to overwhelm him, for his already raspy voice to crack for good. Norm Roberts cried when he thought of his family. He cried when he thought of his friends. He cried when he thought of this impossible journey that took him away from Queens and, ultimately, reeled him back.

“I feel,” Roberts said, in a quiet moment yesterday, “like a man who’s just been handed the keys to the whole world.”

Not the whole world, really, just his little golden patch of it. Just the precinct that includes St. John’s basketball, and the future of the city game, and all the history and conflict and possibility that go along with it. He grew up a cop’s kid, one of eight children, youngest of five boys. He wore hand-me-downs a lot. Now, he gets one more, the remains of the proudest basketball program the city has known.

“I know what I have,” he said. “And I know what I have to do.”

Yesterday, Roberts allowed St. John’s fans to breathe a little easier, to feel good about themselves for the first time in a long, long time. All fans ever ask, at the end of the day, is that their coach cares as much about their team as they do, that they bleed as much, hurt as much, thrill as much, want as much.

For too long, that hasn’t been the case around St. John’s. Fran Fraschilla, splendid coach that he was, always seemed to have one eye on the door. Mike Jarvis saw his job as more bully pulpit than basketball coach, a chance to spread his gospel of pomposity to the masses. Now, at last, St. John’s fans were treated to this observation from their newest sideline messiah:

“If you remember where you come from,” Roberts said, “you’ll always know where you’re going.”

For Roberts, that means Queens. It means Springfield Gardens. Never good enough to wear a St. John’s uniform, he always was plenty good enough to dream about what he might look like inside one.

Every fall, without fail, he would wait for all the basketball princes of New York City to come ambling through the doors at FitzGerald Gymnasium. Walter Berry. Mark Jackson. Matt Brust. Chris Mullin even showed up a couple of times.

Each September, when the workmen took to the Alumni Hall court so it would be ready in time for the Lapchick Tournament, the members of the greatest St. John’s basketball teams would wander from Jamaica over to Flushing, to the cozy field house at Queens College, so they could find a quality run.

These were the moments when Roberts grasped his greatest glory. He’d grown up dreaming of wearing the sacred St. John’s vestments, the way all city kids used to. Like most of them, his talent was never going to get him on the proper side of the city game’s most exclusive velvet rope. He settled for these afternoon runs.

“I have to be honest with you,” Lou Carnesecca said with a smile. “I don’t even remember him as a high school player, and I should, because he won the city championship in this building.”

Roberts came to terms with his own shortcomings in his own ways. When the Redmen would invade his home turf, he would welcome them with knowing grins and warm hugs, and he would compete against them with a desperate passion. This was his chance to dream about wearing those colors, playing in that gym.

Too soon, the clean-up crews would finish, Alumni Hall would re-open, and the Redmen would retreat to their end of the borough. And Roberts would wistfully wave good-bye, and wonder what it was like on the other side of that basketball kingdom.

An empire that now belongs to him.

“It’s a hard, hard job,” the other sandpaper-voiced coach in the room, Carnesecca, said. “Harder now than ever. But it’s a great job, too. You gotta bleed for it a little.”

Looie laughed the Looie laugh.

“I think,” he said, “this man will bleed for it a lot.”

What else could you possibly want?