SAN DIEGO — These Maddening March moments, when a Hall of Fame program that hasn’t been to the Sweet 16 since 1999 finds itself begging for a hero, someone like Dylan Darling can meet the biggest moment of his basketball life with the biggest basket of his basketball life: a buzzer-beating layup for the ages that will go down in St. John’s lore.
Somewhere Up There, Lou Carnesecca and Joe Lapchick must have been smiling when Darling, scoreless for the first 39 minutes and 56.1 seconds, wanted the ball anyway in his team’s most desperate hour. He asked Rick Pitino to run Power for him, took the inbounds pass and went off a ball screen to drive the lane past Elmarko Jackson in the final 3.9 seconds and drive St. John’s, the 67-65 winner, to the Sweet 16 in Washington, D.C. against Duke on Friday night.
Sweet John’s.
Balls the size of church bells, the nickname Pitino gave him, indeed.
