By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
The St. John\u2019s Red Storm punched their ticket to the Sweet 16 for the first time in a quarter century on Sunday night, after a spectacular buzzer-beater layup pushed them past Kansas. <\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s is headed to Washington D.C later this week for a heavy-weight face-off with Duke for their first trip back to the Sweet 16 since 1999. <\/p>\n
Following an emphatic 79-53 win over Northern Iowa in the first round \u2013 led by a double-double from star Zuby Ejiofor \u2013 the Red Storm was set to take on 4-seed Kansas in the Round of 32 on Sunday evening. <\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s commanded most of the game, but squandered a 12-point lead toward the end of the end of the second half, heading into the last minute of play tied up at 65 a piece. <\/p>\n
With just a few seconds left on the clock, and a major decision to be made for head coach Rick Pitino, junior Guard Dylan Darling, who had not scored yet in the game, told the veteran coach he wanted the ball in his hands. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Wait a second. He hasn’t scored a bucket, and he wants to run a play for himself,\u2019\u201d Pitino said after the game. <\/p>\n
With 3.9 seconds left on the clock, Darling took the inbound pass and charged towards the paint, storming past the Kansas defender, hooking a right-handed layup up and over and into the basket right before the buzzer sounded, winning the game for St. John\u2019s, 67-65. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, the ball left my hands and I hit the ground, and I didn’t even see the ball go in,\u201d Darling said. \u201cI just heard everybody going crazy, and everybody was jumping around. It was pretty cool.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI probably don’t deserve this,\u201d the junior from Spokane, Washington added. \u201cI was pretty bad all night long, but my teammates held it down tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitino said he was proud of Darling, whom he affectionately calls \u201cBells\u201d because he\u2019s \u201cgot balls as big as church bells.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cTo want the ball when you haven’t made a shot is unbelievable,\u201d Pitino said. <\/p>\n
Ejiofor and Bryce Hopkins led the team with 18 points, and Ejiofor added 9 rebounds and 4 assists. <\/p>\n
Bronx-raised Ian Jackson had 10 points. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’m just so jubilant, so happy for the fellas,\u201d said Pitino. \u201cWe’ve taken another step now, so it’s just awesome. Proud of our guys, and now it’s just starting. The fun is just starting.\u201d <\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s has a big task ahead of them on Friday night, where they will face one-seed and historical powerhouse Duke. <\/p>\n
Duke is coming into the Sweet 16 matchup following a close contest with 16-seed Siena, and then a more commanding win over eight-seed TCU. <\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s will face Duke Friday night at 7:10 p.m. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach The St. John\u2019s Red Storm punched their ticket to the Sweet 16 for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-173411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}