SAN DIEGO — All high drama requires a setting.

Sunday, that setting was San Diego.

Forever searing our city into the pleasure synapses of many thousands of New Yorkers, a driving layup at San Diego State’s Viejas Arena sent St. John’s University to its first Sweet 16 since 1999.

The basketball banked off the glass as the clock hit 0.00.

It dropped through the net, defeating favored Kansas, 67-65, before a capacity crowd of 12,414, many of whom paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket, and a national CBS audience.

A junior guard named Dylan Darling made it happen, suggesting the final play to coach Rick Pitino, receiving an inbounds pass at midcourt with 3.9 seconds left, driving to his right past a defender and barreling some 30 feet to an unprotected rim.

Though Darling expressed wry disdain for his performance overall, saying he “did a whole lot of nothing” over his 17 scoreless minutes prior to the last play, the first-year Johnnie now goes into the St. John’s pantheon of basketball beloved.

Thousands of New Yorkers will summon his name as readily as those of career greats Chris Mullen and Walter Berry.

San Diego, meantime, goes onto the list of cities synonymous with buzzer-beating winners in higher-stakes NCAA Tournament games.

For St. John’s fans and Darling, San Diego becomes what Philadelphia was to Duke and center Christian Laettner in 1992.

The place where the magic happened in March.

And though Darling’s brilliant moment doesn’t land on the top of the list of March buzzer-beaters off driving layups, it belongs in the group.

If you doubt that San Diego is now etched into the hearts of thousands of New Yorkers, many of whom remember when St. John’s was a national powerhouse, just ask older BYU fans this one: Where did Danny Ainge pull off his coast-to-coast layup in 1981, edging Notre Dame in a Sweet 16 game?

Atlanta, they’ll reply, correctly.

Likewise, query any UCLA sports fans age 50 or older with this: Where did Tyus Edney replicate Ainge’s feat 14 years later, weaving through traffic for the layup against Missouri that sent No. 1 seed UCLA to the Sweet Sixteen in 1995?

Boise, of course.

Dabbing that memory with superglue, the Bruins went on to win the program’s 11th national title.

Presumably every San Diego State fan will ace one of these happy tests, too.

Do I need to tell any Aztecs fans that Houston is where Lamont Butler’s lengthy drive and perfect jump shot beat Florida Atlantic, 72-71, to advance SDSU to the 2023 national championship game?

If you blanked on that one, no worries.

I’ll point out that, for degree of difficulty, Butler’s play stands near the top of the event’s higher-stakes winners at the final horn.

For Pitino, here’s what San Diego became Sunday afternoon when Darling wisely read a spread-out defense and went right instead of left.

San Diego is where Pitino’s basketball ghosts, after hounding him for decades, were sent far away, perhaps for good.

When Laettner made his shot in Philadelphia, sinking a turnaround shot after collecting a long baseball throw from Grant Hill, the opponent was Kentucky.

Kentucky’s coach?

Pitino.

“I was so sick of commercials with Christian Laettner hitting that shot over and over and over,” Pitino, now 73, said Sunday.

Bill Self can relate, after seeing Darling beat the clock.

“The tournament, one of the things that makes it so great is that it can be great, but it can also be cruel,” said the Kansas coach, who led the Jayhawks to the national title in 2008 and 2022.

For St. John’s and Pitino, it’s on to Washington, D.C.

For San Diego hoops fans, the new isn’t ideal. The NCAA Tournament won’t return until 2030.

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