St. John’s heads to Sweet 16 for first time since 1999 after beating Kansas at the buzzer

Dylan Darling scores the game-winning basket to send St. John's to the Sweet 16. Kirby Lee / Imagn Images

SAN DIEGO — Rick Pitino was asked before the Madness of March — a fitting title Sunday afternoon — if his team could win the national championship.

The legendary head honcho, with all the solemnity and gravitas, was on the fence. Was his backcourt, which ranked No. 189 in effective field goal percentage as of Sunday morning, good enough?

In the fogginess of that answer rested one man, a redshirt junior dwarfed in height and weight by all but one player on the floor: Dylan Darling.

“Can we win the national championship?” Pitino told The Athletic’s Ian O’Connor. “I’m not sure our backcourt is strong enough for that. But the way (point guard) Dylan Darling is playing, everything is possible.”

Coach, everything was possible Sunday afternoon, his team snagging a Sweet 16 bid with a 67-65 win over No. 4 seed Kansas.

In a bid to send his school to the regional semifinal for the first time since 1999, Darling hesitated at the top of the key — with Kansas guard Elmarko Jackson strapped to his waist — and took just three dribbles to barge his way into the paint and extend his right arm out for glory.

It was as picture-perfect as it could be, the ball kissing the backboard and plunging down the nylon as the backboard bled nothing but red.

A huddle disbanded as limbs collapsed to Viejas Arena’s floor in sheer jubilation. A cascade of red came hurling down on Darling.

“I probably don’t deserve this,” Darling — who didn’t make a single bucket through 40 minutes — said. “I was pretty bad all night long. I just heard everybody going crazy.”

Ira Gorawara is an intern on the colleges desk at The Athletic focusing on UCLA and the greater Los Angeles area. A senior at UCLA, she was the Sports editor at the Daily Bruin. Prior to joining The Athletic, she worked at the Los Angeles Times, the South China Morning Post, NDTV and a number of cricket publications worldwide.