It’s not every often — ever? — that “Centenary basketball” and “Son of Sam” get in the same sentence. There you have it!

This is all due to the recent announcement that the NCAA will now officially recognize Robert Parish’s statistics while he played for the Gents in the 1970s. As David Berkowitz said when they came to arrest him, “What took you so long?”

The beginning and the end to this story defy description as far as absurdity is concerned. To make a very long story short, back in 1972 when Parish was about to enter Centenary, the NCAA used a formula based on high school grades and standardized tests to predict a player’s GPA, which needed to equate to at least a 1.600. But Parish didn’t take the SAT, so Centenary converted his score from the ACT and used that to the NCAA formula. Centenary had done this for the previous two years and nary a peep. But with the No. 1 recruit in the nation showed up, the NCAA took notice and told Centenary that the move was “illegal.” (Parish wasn’t the only Gents player who this had been applied to.)

So the NCAA dropped six years of probation on the Gents — unless they yanked the scholarships of Parish and four others. Centenary told the NCAA to go jump in the lake.

(One question remains more than 45 years later: Why didn’t Parish and the other just take the SAT? It’s not like they had to achieve a Harvard-like score.)

Eventually the NCAA did away with the formula (called the 1.6 rule), but still stuck the hammer to Centenary. There is the favorite (and often misquoted) line by famed coach Jerry Tarkanian, who often said (kind of), “Every time the NCAA gets mad at (UCLA/Kentucky/other big guys), they add another two years of probation to (Centenary/Cleveland State/other little guys).” Tarkanian filled in whatever blanks he needed to fit the audience, but the message was clear — Centenary was getting hosed.

Parish and others could have gone anywhere else and been instantly eligible, but they stayed on Kings Highway and had a memorable four-year run.

When it was over, he had 2,334 points and 1,820 rebounds, but you’d never know it because the NCAA did not recognize his stats in its record book. Only two players in the history of college basketball have more points AND rebounds than Parish’s totals.

So what happened? Did someone wake up at the NCAA one day last week and say “OK, it’s been 40 years. Enough’s enough.”  Were there protest marches outside the NCAA office and they were worried about the PR hit they were taking?

Actually, to Centenary’s credit, the school made an appeal last year to the NCAA seeking “reinstatement.” After they woke up the guy in charge of such things, the appeal was granted. And then the NCAA turned around and slapped Louisville around by denying its appeal of the vacated 2013 championship.

Somewhere out there, Jerry Tarkanian is smiling.