Columbus, Ohio -- Jordan Burns got a call from his mother, Arenda, on Wednesday night.

She saw a tweet that the Colgate basketball point guard had been left in Hamilton. The Raiders flew to Columbus, Ohio, for their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 23 years earlier in the day.

“My mother called me, she was, like, ‘Wow, I know if you would have missed this flight, you would have picked up the phone and called me, right?’” Burns said. "I was, like, ‘Yeah, mom, I’m in the hotel,’ and things like that.

“I had a lot of little messages like, ‘Did you not make it?’ Like, ‘Wow, they left you? Really?’ Like, ‘That’s crazy, after everything you’ve done?’ People are telling me all this stuff. It’s funny. But it’s just a fake tweet. It’s really hysterical.'”

After the Colgate Basketball team arrived in Columbus, OH they noticed they left a player at the airport in New York.



Freshman Jordan Burns missed the charter flight and is now taking a Uber to Columbus to meet up with the team. — Richard G. West (@RGW_News) March 21, 2019

The tweet, of course, was false. Burns flew with the team, as evidenced in real time by the program’s Twitter account, though that didn’t stop local and national media outlets from blindly picking up on the story. CBS New York and 247Sports.com published posts, clearly without attempting to confirm the (mis)information.

Accounts like this have become popular on Twitter, with many followers understanding that they are intended to fool others. This account’s previous tweet, for instance, was about Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl inviting fans to the team hotel lobby for a barbecue.

Yet, the first question for Burns at the team’s press conference on Thursday was a genuine one about the trip.

“Jordan, there was a story circulating that you took an Uber to get here -- could you just go into detail about that whole experience?” a reporter asked.

“That wasn’t true at all,” Burns responded. “Fake news.”

What is true?

No. 15 seed Colgate (24-10, 13-5 Patriot League) will look to play Cinderella when it takes on No. 2 seed Tennessee on Friday at 2:45 p.m. And Burns’ real story is a good one. After being told that he would never play Division I basketball, he dropped 35 points on 6-of-9 3-point shooting in the Patriot League Tournament championship game.

Stephen Bailey covers Syracuse football for The Post-Standard/Syracuse.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can also be reached anytime via email.