It’s been a long couple of weeks. My life has been consumed by high school basketball.  In the past 12 days, I’ve seen three dozen games. My wife doesn’t recognize me. My wrists ache from typing. And even my dreams involve hoops (I had this crazy dream that North Salem beat Briarcliff in the Class B championship).

Anyway, to escape basketball for a little while tonight in Cortland, I pulled up a chair at a local restaurant and, well, watched basketball. It was UNC-Duke. I have a strange affinity with this game. As much as I love the Big East, I look forward to UNC-Duke more than any other game, mainly because I don’t particularly like either team. The atmosphere is great and I usually find myself rooting for whichever team is losing.

Back to my story… so the game is going on and a guy pulls up a chair next to me. He’s wearing a Syracuse hat and is fixated on the game. Clearly, he’s a huge college basketball fan. His name is Kyle, he’s a Cortland native and when he sees my frustration over the fact that all Duke does is shoot 3-pointers, he strikes up a conversation about Syracuse’s big win over Marquette earlier in the day.

We converse about ‘Cuse for a few minutes — I tell him why they totally deserve an at-large bid and he complains about Paul Harris’ turnover vs. Pittsburgh – when he makes a comment that hits me like a punch in the face.

“Next year, we’re going to be awesome,” Kyle says.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“Because of our big recruit,” he says with a glow.

I pause for a moment, waiting for him to finish his thought, even though I know what he’s thinking. He’s still nodding and smiling when he interrupt.

“Mookie?”

“Oh Yeah!”

Here I am, two hundred of miles away from home, sitting and trying to enjoy my calamari and flat bread pizza dinner while watching UNC-Duke and Kyle is making a push to become my new best friend. He doesn’t know that I’m a sports writer, that I’ve watched Mookie 40 times and that I’ll go to the grave insisting that he Sebastian Teflair are the most accomplished player in New York history. He assumes I’m just some Joe Schmo watching college hoops in a bar.

When he says it, I laugh and explain a little bit about Mookie Jones, the Peekskill star who has signed with Syracuse. I explain why Mookie is, what I call, a “future superstar role player” and how he’ll completely dominate games yet only score 6 points. Kyle gets even more excited over the future Orange and then I lay on him the same tidbit of knowledge that I drop on anyone who asks:

As great as Mookie is now, he’ll only be better in college.

At this point, Kyle is borderline giddy. He asks where the Final Four is next season so he can explore hotels and airfare. Can you blame him? Once I start telling him stories of Mookie’s playoff performances, how mature he is and the swagger he plays every game with. And how much he’s sacrificed this season just to shed some attention onto his teammates, he’s convinced of what I already knew for years — Mookie  is a special kid.

Anyway, that’s my story. Overall, it was a pretty eventful day from a basketball standpoint.

Tuckahoe and North Salem, as mentioned, had their incredible runs ended in the closing seconds at New Paltz. Mount Vernon trounced Binghamton, albeit ugly, to earn a spot in Glens Falls for the eighth time in nine seasons. Duke, despite stellar play from New Rochelle rival Greg Paulus, went scoreless over the final 5:25 and lost to UNC.

And a random guy who loves his local team found happiness over just talking about a kid I watched grow up from an 8th-grade project into a polished superstar.

Of all those things, I’m pretty sure which one I’ll never forget.