St. John’s is going to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999 thanks to the newest ‘Darling’ of March Madness.
After squandering a 14-point lead with eight minutes to go, the Red Storm knocked off Kansas 67-65 on a lay-up from guard Dylan Darling, who hadn’t scored a point all game and had his previous four shot attempts all come from three-point range.
The backstory to this final possession is one not often seen in men’s college basketball. With 13 seconds left, Kansas phenom Darryn Peterson sunk two free throws to give the Jayhawks their first tie since it was 6-6 early in the first half. Kansas had only been charged with two personal fouls up to this point, so head coach Bill Self instructed his team to use their remaining four fouls to give. Every foul occurred in the back court and took the clock all the way down to 3.9 seconds. Once the fouling was done, Darling received the final inbound pass, took it straight at Elmarko Jackson and the lefty used his weaker hand to score the first buzzer-beating dagger of this year’s tournament.
In the post-game press conference, Rick Pitino told reporters that it was “the funniest thing he’s ever been involved with” when Darling told him to run a play for himself… even though Pitino hadn’t noticed his scoreless performance.
Darling was just seven for his last 37 shots from the floor stretching back to the Big East tournament. He still called his own number and it paid off brilliantly. In fact, this is the first time an NCAA Tournament winner with zeroes on the clock has ever been scored by someone without a made field goal.
Pitino is back in the Sweet 16 for the first time since coaching Louisville in 2015, although if we want to be technical about it, his most recent non-vacated appearance was in 2009. Kansas has been bounced before the second weekend for a fourth consecutive year and will be left ruing their 16 turnovers and generally sloppy performance.
The No. 5 seed St. John’s will fly from San Diego to Washington DC for a highly anticipated showdown with the No. 1 overall seeded Duke Blue Devils on Friday, Mar. 27.
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