Some day, Terrence Roberts knows, he’ll return to the halls of St. Anthony High School and happily sit down with the man who once threatened to punch Roberts so hard that he’d make a hole through his body.

For four years at St. Anthony, players take the insults and the intimidation from Bob Hurley Sr., who’s arguably the most well-regarded high-school basketball coach in the nation. Happens with everybody. Then, somewhere between graduation and adulthood, fear turns to gratitude. Screaming subsides and lessons remain. The players return to Hurley’s office and thank him.

Hurley’s been at St. Anthony, in Jersey City, N.J., since 1972, compiling a winning percentage just a shade below .900. He’s coached a handful of NBA players, including a son of the same name. He’s coached hundreds of future college players. He also coached Roberts, a 6-foot-9 power forward who will attend Syracuse as a freshman next season.

As Roberts spoke with a reporter early Tuesday afternoon — a day when St. Anthony, on account of Easter break, didn’t have classes — he didn’t even have to guess what his former teammates were doing: “I bet the underclassmen are practicing right now,” he said. “The way we practice, the way we play, it’s always very demanding. Coach Hurley wants you to commit all of your time.”

And so they do, often with great results. During Roberts’ junior year, he played with three seniors, including current St. John’s guard Elijah Ingram, who’d go on to earn Division I scholarships. That season, the Friars won New Jersey’s Tournament of Champions, comprised of both parochial and public schools.

Although success may seem inevitable at St. Anthony, it’s not automatic. Big difference, and Hurley knows it. St. Anthony practices 12 months a year and started doing so well before other top high schools followed suit.

Hurley coaches with such scrutiny and attention to detail that his players rarely make the same mistake twice. If they do, they hear about it. Obie Nwadike, a Central Connecticut-bound senior and Roberts’ best friend on the basketball team, remembers that Hurley once threatened to beat him in the locker room with the lights off.

“Playing under him,” Nwadike said, “you can’t take any plays off. You have to take insults. You have to take put-downs. You can’t let those things intimidate you. You have to use it as motivation. That’s how he teaches.

“After Coach Hurley, any college coach I have isn’t going to seem that hard.”

His presence in high-school basketball is so great — one local paper, The Star-Ledger, called him “as recognizable a landmark as we have in New Jersey” — that his profile eclipses that of any St. Anthony player, even the blue-chippers. Terrence Roberts? Oh, he’s one of Hurley’s kids.

Despite Roberts’ success, Hurley doesn’t play favorites.

“Yeah, one time, he told Terrence that he was gonna punch a hole through his body,” Nwadike recalled.

Hurley has such an influence that his players, even when they move on to their college coaches, are defined by Hurley’s toughness and demand for excellence.

“He’s the definition of a perfectionist,” said George Canda, an assistant at St. Anthony until last season. “His attention to detail is ridiculous. Every mistake is corrected.

“He’s very demanding with his players, and they all know that coming in. His practices are very high-level, very intense from a mental aspect. One thing colleges like about St. Anthony players is their basketball IQ. When Terrence arrives at Syracuse, he’ll know things that most freshmen don’t know.”

Roberts, insults aside, has had a tougher road to college than most. Starting in his junior year, he took the SAT six or seven times — he can’t remember the exact number. The first three tries yielded results between 540 and 690, not good enough for NCAA eligibility. Then, while at a five-star basketball camp before his senior season, Roberts found out his fourth score: 1010.

“I was like ‘Whoa,’ ” Roberts said. “But then I was told that it was under review because it went up so quickly, and I was like, ‘Here we go again.’ ”

Roberts, who had enrolled in an SAT prep course, needed to take it again. And again. Finally, he finished with a score in the 900s and gladly accepted it.

Syracuse accepted Roberts with equal thankfulness. When Roberts committed to Syracuse in October, though, he’d played just one year of varsity basketball. Before his sophomore season, Roberts broke his tibia, ruptured his patella and tore his anterior cruciate ligament while dunking in an informal practice.

Roberts still remembers the date: Sept. 20, 2000. Roberts also remembers the sight: “It looked like my knee slid down my leg,” he said.

“He was on the ground, and we knew he’d really hurt himself,” Nwadike remembered. “When he rolled over and we saw his knee, it looked like he had a golf ball in there. He was screaming hard. That’s the worst injury I’ve ever seen, period.”

Roberts missed the season, but he now credits Hurley for coaxing him through the frustrating rehab. Even with Roberts on the sideline, Hurley would remind the sophomore that he still had the talent to start for the Friars next season.

Next season, Roberts averaged 13 points. This year, he upped his production to 17. According to most high-school recruiting publications, he’s among the top 50 graduating players in the nation.

“To be able to come back and earn a scholarship while playing just two years of high school basketball, that says a lot,” Nwadike said.

It also says a lot about Hurley. In two years of teaching, Hurley turned Roberts into a complete player, a player whose game has no holes. Thanks to a punch restrained, neither does his body.

Published on April 22, 2003 at 12:00 pm