They call him “church bells” for a reason.
Dylan Darling doesn’t scare easily. He was struggling with his shot, but the St. John’s point guard didn’t let it negatively impact his confidence.
He found his game at the right time, scoring the first six points in a championship-sealing 13-0 run.
“Coach [Rick Pitino] just told me to keep shooting,” Darling said after the top-seeded Johnnies won a program-record second straight Big East Tournament crown with a 72-52 rout of No. 2 seed Connecticut at a sold-out Garden. “He believed in me. Down the stretch, they just went in.”
Added Pitino: “It just shows you about him.”
Darling was 1-for-8 from the field at one point, but he stuck with it. He scored on a drive, hit two free throws, then hit a pull-up jumper. Those plays pushed the St. John’s lead to 16 with 5:09 remaining, and UConn didn’t have an answer.
“You can’t ask for anything more than this,” said Darling, who finished with eight points and five assists. “Madison Square Garden, Saturday night, Big East championship, UConn. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
You can relive this year’s Big East Tournament the first week of April in an hourlong show documenting the drama.
The independent WorkShop Content Studios is producing a behind-the-scenes look at this year’s event called “March at the Garden,” executive producer Tom Farrell told The Post.
CHECK OUT THE LATEST BIG EAST STANDINGS AND ST. JOHN’S STATS
The company produced the docuseries “Pitino: Red Storm Rising,” following Pitino and the Johnnies all of last season. That aired on Vice TV. This show will be televised starting April 1 on Fox Sports 1 at 6:30 p.m. and repeat six hours later.
“This is an all-access pass to what happens behind the scenes during the Big East Tournament,” Farrell said. “A lot of people tune in and watch the games. Where we’ve gone with our cameras, we almost make the Garden a character in and of itself. We’re in locker rooms, we’re at the awards ceremony, we had a mic on [St. John’s star] Zuby [Ejiofor] the other day.
“We really get an intimate look at how the inner workings of the Big East Tournament wrapped around all the drama of the games themselves.”
Pitino became the fifth coach in Big East history to win five conference tournament titles.
The other four are Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun (seven), Georgetown’s John Thompson Jr. (six), and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Villanova’s Jay Wright (five).
The Johnnies have now won six straight Big East Tournament games by double figures. They didn’t trail at all during the tournament.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
