The New York Post is saying that current St. John's coach Norm Roberts' time is numbered.

The Post is saying that Siena coach Fran McCaffery is on a short list of possible replacements.

McCaffery has seven years left on his contract in Loudonville that runs through the 2006-17 season.

The Saints played the Red Storm this season at The Palestra, with St. John's winning 77-68 on Nov. 27.

Fellow MAAC coach, Iona's Kevin Willard, who won the conference's coach of the year, is also on the list.

Here's what the Post said.

Highly placed sources said that Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg, a Long Island native with ties to St. John’s, tops their list of realistic candidates. Greenberg is a two-time ACC Coach of the Year.

Several sources at St. John’s said the university was prepared to offer a long-term (six years), lucrative ($1.5 million annually) deal to the right candidate.

Hofstra coach Tom Pecora, who is highly respected by high school and AAU coaches in the metropolitan area, also is on the Red Storm’s wish list as is Siena coach Fran McCaffery, Iona coach Kevin Willard and Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, the former Seton Hall and Michigan coach.

Sources told The Post that former St. John’s and Knicks star Mark Jackson has reached out through third parties to gauge if there is interest on the university’s behalf. Although he has name recognition, he has no head-coaching experience.

ALBANY - Siena senior Alex Franklin scored a game-high 23 points against Iona on Friday night and the forward leads the team averaging 16.4 points per game.

“This is a team loaded with very good basketball players,” Iona coach Kevin Willard said. “But I think he’s the best in the conference by far.”

Willard said he stopped Franklin in the postgame hand shake line and told him he has to graduate because Williard doesn't like playing against Franklin.

“He’s everything that I want my young four’s (power forwards) to be,” Willard said.

While Siena has a number of options for the conference player of the year, Willard said he thought it was pretty cut and dry.

“I don’t know how you could vote for anybody else for player of the year,” he said.

ALBANY - University at Albany coach Will Brown does like to play up each of his opponents and after Tuesday's practice was no different.

“They’re a top three, top four, worst case scenario,” Brown said. “Any time you go on the road and win at Providence, beat Creighton and lose, I believe in overtime to Florida State, you’re pretty darn good.”

The only thing different is this Iona team might actually be as good as Brown is portraying.

Kevin Willard is in his third season as head coach and he has a pretty good, albeit young team this season.

Willard came over from Louisville and Brown said the pressure his Gaels use is nearly a clone of pressure from Louisville days, while also having some similarities to the Holy Cross teams his father Ralph coached.

The Great Danes are coming off of an overtime loss at Central Connecticut, but it seems like the team is over that game.

“I think that the Central game is pretty much out of our system,” said senior forward Will Harris. “It wasn’t for lack of effort and if we’re going to lose than we want to get beat.”

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Through 11 games, UAlbany is shooting 43 percent from the field and 31 percent from 3-point range.

With the struggles last year's team had shooting the ball, I asked Brown is he thought his team shooting the ball better this season.

“I anticipated us being a much better shooting team,” Brown, citing injuries to Louis Barraza and somewhat slow starts of Jake Lindfors and Logan Aronholt.

He's like to be higher percentage-wise so that teams can't help more on drives or clog the lanes.

“I think we’re better yeah, but we’re still not good enough right now,” said Brown.

Put Iona coach Kevin Willard amongst those who believe Siena should be considered for an at-large bid.

“No offense to the other nine teams, us included, this is the best basketball team in the league,” Willard said of the Saints. “If they’re not being talked about for an at-large bid, they need to be because they’ve played a very tough schedule, they’ve played on the road against a tough schedule and they’ve taken care of business. I don’t see anybody coming in this building, any of the big guys. I think Stanford is the last team that came in here and they got it handed to them last year.”

If Siena wins out, including the BracketBuster game and loses in the MAAC championship game, they would be 27-6 and I believe they should certainly be considered.

After Monday's near defeat though, that discussion shouldn't start anytime soon.

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I talked at length about Edwin Ubiles' game-winning shot in Tuesday's paper edition, but here's a little more about the shot.

“I actually didn’t think the play was going to come to me,” Ubiles said. “Kenny (Hasbrouck) had hit two big shots before that, so I thought he was going to get it.”

Once Ubiles got the ball, he made the big play.

“Ubiles is terrific,” Willard said. “He hit a tough shot.”

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While I'm sure Willard made some friends amongst Saints fans with his statement above, he won't make any with this. After mentioning that he thinks Siena point guard Ronald Moore is right up near the top of the list in terms of the top point guards in the league, he said this about his point guard, freshman Scott Machado.

“I think I have the best to be honest with you,” Willard said.

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Moore and Ryan Rossiter combined to shutdown Iona's game-winning attempt with four seconds to go in a situation, which they said they go over in practice.

“Ronald was key on that play because our goal is not to allow their point guard catch it with a head of steam,” Rossiter said. “Ron cut him off, he had to stop and catch the ball and that really helped."

Rossiter also helped by tipping the ball twice before Machado could handle it.

“Rossiter was unbelievable,” Siena coach Fran McCaffery said. “He’s terrific on the ball.”

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Junior Alex Franklin added another thunderous dunk to his resume on Monday.

He gave Siena a 10-point lead with his flush at 5:04 of the first half.

“I’ve just been getting in open lanes and I’m just trying to finish hard,” Franklin said. “I promised Coach (Andrew) Francis I would get him a dunk, so I had to get him one.”