STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Mouhamadou Gueye's parents always have been proud of his achievements as a student and an athlete. There was a time, though, when they were exasperated with him. In high school, he kept outgrowing his clothes.

"My mom started getting annoyed at me. We'd go shopping and she'd say, `Clothes should last you a while.' Then, the next thing you know, a few months later, I can't get into these pants or the sleeves on the shirt can't fit me," he said with a laugh.

Gueye is pleased that his wardrobe now includes a properly fitting Stony Brook basketball uniform, the mark of his sizable journey from 5-foot-9 high school point guard to dynamic 6-foot-9 college big man.

"The doctors and my basketball trainers knew I was going to be tall. My dad is 6-4," he said. "Growing up, I had long legs. So they said I would be tall. They didn't know I was going to be 6-9 tall."

What really impresses his Seawolves coaches and teammates is that he did not outgrow the skills he developed as a guard at Curtis High School on Staten Island. The Stony Brook junior still can handle the ball and pass it. He still can shoot from the outside. He still can run the floor with the best of them.

He showed that in a road victory against defending America East champion Vermont during the opening week of conference play. Gueye took a lead bounce pass from Andrew Garcia, caught it in stride, took off from about five feet left of the lane, soared over a defender and slammed home a dunk that landed him on SportsCenter's Top 10 for the third time in two weeks.

The network had featured him twice among its highlight clips in one night, on the road against defending national champion Virginia on Dec. 18. First, it was for having blocked the same opponent twice in one sequence. Then, it was for faking a shot at the three-point line, driving to the hoop and finishing with a two-handed jam.

Gueye, who is averaging 6.9 points and 6.5 rebounds per game this season, didn't know about his first brush with fame until 7 a.m. the next day.

"I checked my phone and I had a bunch of notifications. People were messaging me, like, `You're on SportsCenter! You're on SportsCenter!' I was kind of confused," he said. "It was crazy, because growing up, you always wanted to be on SportsCenter Top 10. I don't want to say it's a huge accomplishment, but it's not nothing."

"Growing up" had an entirely different meaning for Gueye than it does for most people. He grew and grew. He recalls being 5-9 at the start of his sophomore year in high school, then finishing at 6-feet that spring. The next year, he started at 6-3 and ended at 6-5. By the time he entered Monroe College, a two-year school in New Rochelle, he was 6-9.

Necessary adjustments were plenty, and not only at the shirts and pants counters.

"Just getting used to being really tall in general, all that extra attention. Getting used to ducking in certain places," he said. "But I didn't really change much in terms of working out or working on my game.

"It helps me, and I would say it helps the team, too. I really like passing the ball. And now, having this extra height, it's easy to see over the defenders and see where I need to get the ball."

Basketball was in his future from a young age because Babacar, his father, and Souwadou, his mother, both played in Senegal before moving to Staten Island. Both parents have busy schedules — Babacar is a construction worker, Souwadou works in a nursing home — so they see most of their son's games on ESPN+ rather than in person. But they were on hand when the Seawolves played at Wagner on Staten Island, a game Stony Brook won on a last-second shot by their son.

"When you're raising kids, especially when you're an immigrant, the first thing they try to push through is education," said the player known as Mo to his teammates. "It was always education before everything else, and it still is. But once they realized how invested I was in basketball, they started putting me in all kinds of programs to help me improve."

Gueye said his team at Stony Brook feels more like a family than any squad to which he ever has belonged. Coach Geno Ford befriended him during the recruiting process two years ago, when Ford was the associate head coach. And the players made him feel at home immediately last summer.

"We can really be competitive together. We can really hold each other accountable at times, when we need to," Gueye said. "We can always kick back and joke around when we need to. We're all on the same page."

The feeling is that the sky is the limit. And, for Gueye, the sky is a lot closer than it used to be.

Author Mark Herrmann retired from Newsday Sports after 36 years. He will be inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame on May 26.