Is He in Winning Joisey?

He should sew I (Heart) NY on his uniform.

“We are gonna shock the world!” says Jason Cipolla, temporary prince of the city, nice kid from Queens, pride of Sicilian grandparents, favorite singer Sinatra, favorite actors De Niro and Pacino, favorite food calamari, favorite team Syracuse, which goes for the national championship tonight, over there in Jersey.

People say Syracuse can’t win.

“If they do, I think they’re very, very stupid, what can I say?” says Cipolla, who starts for Syracuse at forward.

People say Kentucky’s too good.

“If we play our hots out, that’s all we can ax for,” Cipolla says.

“What did he say?” asks a tourist, who speaks no New York.

“He says if they play their hearts out, that’s all they can ask for.”

Joe Namath for a day, Jason Cipolla is calling his shot. Shock the world, is what he says. He repeats it, 20 minutes later. Kentucky’s a what? “Fourteen-point favorite? Fifteen?” Cipolla asks (axes), scratching his curly head, not supposed to discuss the spread, but not able to resist. “I think that’s just totally ridiculous.”

Here he is, off-Broadway. Good to be in Manhattan again. Sunday morning, sun in the sky, traffic in the tunnel, pretzels in the carts, pets with people with scoopers, what’s not to like? This is his town, Jason Cipolla’s. (“Sip-pole-ah.”) Maybe he shoots basketballs upstate, but he is New York, New York, nose to toes; P.S. 63, St. Thomas the Apostle, Christ the King High, Woodhaven, Ozone Park, Howard Beach, summers in Rockaway.

“How you doin’?” Jason greets everybody he meets.

They welcome him back, like Kotter. Everybody’s here. Everybody’s coming to see him play.

“I had dinner in the hotel lobby, you know, in the restaurant, last night around midnight. Me, my mother, father, my cousin Stevie, my brother Chris, my friend Ray, my friend Shawn, uh, I guess that’s it. There was champagne on the table. I didn’t have none.

“My brother says, ‘Man, I can’t believe it, you did it!’

“But I say, ‘We didn’t do nothin’ yet.’ ”

Mom, well, she is so pumped. Helen Cipolla sits there at the games, T-shirt orange, fingernails painted orange. She saw practically every game Jason ever played as a kid. She did his homework, read his books, wrote his reports. Anything to help. Jason, he seemed so bright, but his grades, they were awful. He flunked his tests. He came home nights, appealed to her: “Ma, why am I so stupid?”

With that, Helen couldn’t help. She had no answer. Off to junior college Jason went, even though he was first-team all-city, one of the five best preps in all of New York. To a junior college in Tallahassee, yet. “Flah-ra-da,” Jason still calls it.

First semester, his grade-point average was 0.9. He thought of dropping out.

Finally, someone got wise. Jason wasn’t stupid. He suffered from Attention Deficit Syndrome. His study habits were poor. A tutor was hired. When the big-time university recruiters came around, they promised to oversee Jason’s education as well as his jumper.

Who called first? Funny you should ax.

“Kentucky,” Jason says. “They came in on a private jet. And that gets all the kids’ attention right there, let me tell ya.

“I went to Rupp Arena. What they got there, 26,000 seats? Words can’t describe that place. Everybody wearin’ blue and everything. I don’t know how anybody turns that down.”

Cipolla turned it down. Too many players, too little playing time. Syracuse made more sense. Mom and Dad could drive up, see him play. If it wasn’t New York City, it was the next-best thing. Mom hates to miss a game.

She has already worn out a VCR tape of the Georgia game, when Jason saved the season for Syracuse by nailing a 12-foot shot, just as the horn went off. Jason keeps telling her: “Ma! You ain’t gotta show it to everybody!” But that’s what makes her Ma. As soon as the Syracuse team won the West Regional to reach the Final Four, the first thing Ma Cipolla said to everybody was: “Look! He finally got a haircut!”

For his 15th birthday, she bought him a bike, a Mongoose. It was so cool. The four crooks who knocked him off it, they thought so too. One put a gun to Jason’s head, then said: “Nice bike.” The bicycle thief rode off on it. Jason walked home, feeling bad at first, then better. Hey, could have been worse. Guy could have pulled the trigger.

One of the New York papers covering the NCAAs called Cipolla “the quintessential Dead End Kid, with everything but a cigarette dangling from his lips.”

But basketball has been no dead end. Cipolla will graduate on time. His GPA is now 2.4. He is so happy with everything that’s happening, Jason came to a press table after Syracuse had won Saturday’s game, picked up a telephone and, without dialing, called into it: “We’re goin’ to the championship! Hello?” Then he hung up, apologizing later for what he called actin’ stupid. Nice kid.