Norm Roberts is the hometown boy who has made good, but he’s not yet a household name at St. John’s.

Based on a sampling of the student body, St. John’s students don’t know much about their new men’s basketball coach. They just know they want to win, they want to win with New York players, and they certainly want to get away from the embarrassing off-the-court incidents that seemed to occur on a weekly basis.

“He has to go beyond the NIT,” junior Ese A. O’Diah said. “We haven’t been to the Final Four in years. This school wants to be recognized again as one of the top schools in the NCAA.”

Roberts was introduced yesterday as the Red Storm’s new coach and he talked about winning a national championship, not just a Big East title. The 38-year-old Queens native also guaranteed he would do everything possible to make sure Red Storm players didn’t embarrass themselves or their university.

“To me, that stuff’s all in the past,” sophomore Kenny Calderon of Manhattan said. “He just has to make it better. How we went from second best in the Big East to the bottom is beyond me.”

St. John’s fell from the ranks of the elite for many reasons, none more important than the fact that former coach Mike Jarvis stopped recruiting the players, especially those from the metropolitan area.

“It always starts at home,” said Shamerre McKenzie, a sophomore from The Bronx and member of the track team.

Roberts said no city player of Big East caliber would go unnoticed. Roberts said he and his staff would recruit the player, his family and his friends.

“Recruiting hasn’t been too great the last few years,” said James Lally, a redshirt freshman baseball player from Floral Park who attended Archbishop Molloy, where Roberts got his first break coaching the freshman basketball team.

“There were guys at my school who went on to play at Penn State and Georgia who said they never heard from St. John’s. I don’t understand that.”