{"id":714528,"date":"2026-04-20T10:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714528\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T10:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T10:48:18","slug":"st-johns-mens-basketball-cult-hero-dylan-darling-transfers-to-grand-canyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714528\/","title":{"rendered":"St. John\u2019s men\u2019s basketball cult hero Dylan Darling transfers to Grand Canyon"},"content":{"rendered":"

It didn\u2019t take long for former St. John\u2019s guard Dylan Darling to find a landing spot after entering the transfer portal<\/a> last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-2 point guard from Spokane, Washington is going back out west, announcing this weekend that he is committing to play his final year of college basketball at burgeoning mid-major power Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n

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Following a breakout season in which he won the Big Sky Player of the Year award after leading Idaho State in scoring, Darling transferred to St. John\u2019s ahead of his redshirt junior year. He averaged 6.9 points, 2.6 assists, and 1.4 steals on 39.8% shooting and 27.7% from three in his only season with the Red Storm, closing the campaign as the Johnnies\u2019 point guard through the Big East and NCAA Tournaments.<\/p>\n

Darling earned the nickname \u201cBells\u201d for his clutch shot-making, which was inspired by head coach Rick Pitino commenting that the point guard had \u201cballs as big as church bells\u201d after he made a game-winning step-back three-point jumper<\/a> in the Red Storm\u2019s 89-84 victory over Xavier in January.<\/p>\n

During the second round of this year\u2019s NCAA Tournament, Darling produced one of the most memorable shots in St. John\u2019s men\u2019s basketball history when he scored a driving layup at the buzzer to defeat Kansas<\/a> and send the Red Storm to their first Sweet Sixteen since 1999. It was his first and only basket of the game.<\/p>\n

His newest team in Grand Canyon is looking to make its fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in seven seasons. Led by head coach Bryce Drew, someone who also made a famous buzzer-beating shot in the NCAA Tournament<\/a>, the Antelopes finished as a top-four team in their intrepid season in the Mountain West Conference with an overall record of 20-12 (13-7 in conference).<\/p>\n

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So far this offseason, the Antelopes also added transfers Blake Barkley from East Tennessee State (14.6 ppg in 2025-26), Tyler Behrend from Tulsa (6.5 ppg, 5.2 rpg in 2025-26), former five-star recruit Omaha Biliew<\/a> from Wake Forest (6.3 ppg in 2025-26), and Jaden Zimmerman from Quinnipiac (15.1 ppg in 2025-26).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It didn\u2019t take long for former St. John\u2019s guard Dylan Darling to find a landing spot after entering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,6133,9894,231,772,1400,37465,1544,18375,4163,5920],"class_list":{"0":"post-714528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-connecticut-huskies","11":"tag-dylan-darling","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaa-tournament","15":"tag-ncaa-tournaments","16":"tag-ncaab","17":"tag-omaha-biliew","18":"tag-point-guard","19":"tag-red-storm"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116436644924783621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}