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Fangs, as I stated earlier, I think you did fine. Sure, somethings could have been done differently, but it is always easy to break down a situation and evaluate it after the situation has long ended. In your case, no one got hurt, everyone went home, and that was the goal. The only thing I would caution you against is being too "jumpy" or quick to grab for a gun. That snubby should come out only when it is time for deadly force, and you were not even close to that situation from what I am reading.
Here is a similar story to yours. I have a brother who is quite a bit younger than I, and when he was in college, almost exactly your age, he found himself with an angry ex-girlfriend, who started getting her other guy friends to threaten him. Now of course, this is high-tech threatening, text messages, voice-mails, myspace attacks. The main guy, we will call him REX, was relentless. These went on an on until my brother was becoming a basket case. I told him that anyone who will attack you on myspace, is an immature moron and is blowing hot air. I tried to explain to him that people who are going to kick your foot usually don't tell you before hand, but rather they save it as a little surprise. He was not buying it and thought he was a dead man walking. Well one day I am with him and he gets text number 15 for the day, it was from Rex who said he was heading to a local bar with 7 of his friends, they wanted to "have a talk" with my brother, and if he did not show up, they were gonna come looking for him. While my brother was in full scale freak out mode I took the phone out of his hand, and shot a text back, "ok, see you there".
I told my brother that this was idiotic and we were going to talk to these guys and get it stopped. Just to be safe, I called one of my other friends to go with us. He is a really big guy that I work out with and when I explained the situation to him, he agreed that we were looking at bluff, and no one would show up. I did not have any weapons and my nervous factor was about a 1 on a scale of 10.
We get to the bar an hour early and get a table. This is a well known biker bar which some college kids frequent on the weekends. I ride, and just by chance two of my riding friends, in full Harley-Davidson dress, showed up, saw me and promptly pulled two more chairs up to our table. With in 15 more minutes three guys from the place I work came in (blue-collar mechanic types), totally by chance, and pulled up another table and sat with us. I did not mention that we were waiting for anyone as I was totally confident that no one was going to show up.
Well, the dreaded time arrived. At the "stroke of midnight" so to speak, a woman, who my brother identified as Rex's girlfriend, walks in through the front door, scans the room, makes eye-contact with my brother, and quickly walks out the back door. "hmm, that was interesting" I think. So we wait for a minute, then 5 minutes, then 30 minutes, and finally an hour and a half later, I decide it is time to go home. No one ever showed up, and my brother never got another text, e-mail, phone call or any contact from any of them ever again.
I know this is a long story, but the point is, these types of situations happen more often than you think. Some angry girl, gets a bunch of her male friends (who usually want to get some action from the angry girl) and uses them to bully someone else, but it is usually just simple female manipulation coupled with male bullying. They don't want to fight, they don't want to get hit, they just want to impress the girl and "get rewarded". Don't sweat these types of guys, but don't over react by shooting some horny meatball in the head unless it is truly unavoidable. Like dogs, bone-heads smell fear and run in packs. Honestly, as a much older, more experienced guy than you, I would have informed the group of moron kids that they were trespassing and to leave immediately. As tough as "Dark" probably thinks he is, he was not tough enough to come by himself. If he sees that you are not intimidated, and that you are really serious, I think you will see the tough exterior start to crack a little. He is going to quickly realize he is the one with a problem on his hands. It's the psychology of self-defense my friend.

The "big gun-small gun" debate is one every CHL holder seems to spend a lot of time thinking about, myself included. While I value everyones opinions here, I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that a 5-shot snubby is not adequate for 99% of all self-defense situations. There is no gun that is the choice perfect 100% of the time. In a real world situation, once someone fires a shot, people scatter. I just don't believe that if you were to draw and fire that first shot in self-defense, that the actor's friends would continue advancing until you had shot the first 5. ANYTHING is possible of course, but even with alcohol involved, this is not a likely event. What's that saying about "nothing sobers up a drunk faster than a police car driving behind him"? While we know this is not completely accurate, I think that a shot being fired into your buddies chest, would make a drunk pop back to reality for a second or two. I know everyone is probably thinking I am a snubby carrier, but no. I may be a hypocrite, but I carry either a colt commander or an HK .40. The reason is because I try to be prepared for the dreaded "Columbine" situation. If I have to repel an attack carried out by a shooter with a carbine, I feel that those two pistols give me sufficient accuracy from a distance and enough "knockdown" power from 10-20 yards out. If my primary objective is easy concealment and self defense at a point blank range, I would be very secure with the 5 shot .38.
I am really enjoying this forum as I am hearing so many different points of view on this, and other subjects, so feel free to let me have it for this post. (maybe my real problem is that I think the 2-shot derringers are super cool and I really want one, so I need to justify the capacity of a 5-shot! I am going to sneak a bond arms snake slayer into my collection if I can hide if from my wife!).

Over all I think you did a good job though I agree with most of the points made about not opening the door in the first place. I have found myself in similar situations in my younger days except with no snubby in my pocket. Most times these types of problems are made up by a couple of guys who like to talk about fighting, but not actually fight. Mix in some alcohol, a couple of girls show up to stir the pot some more, and then all bets are off. The good news is that at some point we grow up enough that at least these types of things stop happening to us!
Lonewolf is dead on correct when he said you can't go by looks. It seems that the buff guy with the tribal tattoo around his arm and the big mouth never actually does anything. It is always the skinny quiet guy sitting in the corner who will really hurt you. At least these are my observations.
One more thing, when did a .38 revolver become a bad self-defense choice? I don't think there was anything wrong with your choice of gun. I wouldn't stick around if you took a shot at me with that thing. We have been programmed that "bigger is better" when it comes to firearms. For a lot of people this just is not true. .38 certainly has sufficient stopping power for point-blank self defense. The mild recoil will help you get that second shot of fast if you need it, but in this case, I doubt you would have.