SAN ANTONIO — If the teams competing in the national semifinals of the N.C.A.A. tournament were cars, they would be found on distinctly different lots. Memphis would be a Porsche — sleek, fast and flashy. The U.C.L.A. Bruins would be a Honda Accord — reliable, efficient and not bound to turn any heads on the freeway. Even U.C.L.A. center Kevin Love acknowledged that he would rather watch the Tigers play than his own team.
In the race for a spot in the national title game, Memphis played at a speed that the Bruins simply could not match. The Tigers raced to Monday’s final with a 78-63 victory over the Bruins. They will face the winner of Saturday’s late game between Kansas and North Carolina.
In Memphis’s drive to win its first national title in basketball, point guard Derrick Rose was in the driver’s seat with Chris Douglas-Roberts riding shotgun. Rose, a freshman point guard expected to be one of the top two picks in the N.B.A. draft, led with a veteran’s aplomb and kept the pace to the Tigers’ liking.
Douglas-Roberts did the rest, commanded the stage at this star-studded Final Four by leading all scorers with 28 points, flashing an array of floaters, runners and hard slashes to the basket. Douglas-Roberts provided the game’s signature moment, a backdoor cut and left-handed dunk that knocked over Love.
That sequence showed that the even if the Porsche does not get the best gas mileage, it always give a heck of a ride. In a game that ended up being a sprint, the Bruins were left choking on the Tigers’ exhaust fumes.
Rose finished with 25 points and the Tigers’ erratic big man, Joey Dorsey, had a game that showed his fickle nature, grabbing 15 rebounds and scoring no points.
Memphis’s players, thanks to their affiliation with Conference USA, have talked about being an outsider and playing with a chip on their shoulders. But this Memphis team (38-1) has won more games than any other in college basketball history. The Tigers’ only loss this season came at home to No. 2 Tennessee, and their collection of talent is among the most athletic and impressive in the country.
U.C.L.A.’s third consecutive trip to the Final Four again ended in heartbreak. The Bruins (36-3) fell behind by as many points in the first half and never looked in sync on the floor. U.C.L.A. Coach Ben Howland burned timeouts to spur on his team and howled at his team, which looked sloppy all night.
James Keefe and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute dropped sure rebounds out of bounds. Darren Collison looked unsteady at point guard all night. The only consistent Bruin on the evening was Russell Westbrook, who thrived in the higher tempo and finished with 22 points. After Memphis burst to an 11-point lead early in the second half, the Bruins failed to cobble together a significant threat.
Memphis’s fast-paced style helped them pull out to leads as large as 7 in the first half while they kept U.C.L.A. from playing its preferred bloody knuckles style.
Memphis led at the end of the first half, 38-35, but its biggest victory might have been controlling the tempo. The Tigers appeared determined to not let the pace get ground down the way it did in San Jose two years ago when U.C.L.A. beat Memphis, 50-45, in an aesthetically offensive West regional final game.
With 13 minutes 32 seconds remaining in the game, the teams had already matched their point total from that game in 2006, showing that Memphis had the tempo it wanted.
The Tigers’ early game plan appeared to be to not let more than eight seconds tick off the shot clock, as they hurried down the floor and rarely passed the ball more than three times.
No one better epitomized this than the crafty Douglas-Roberts, who led all scorers in the first half with 13 points. He got them with a series of innovative driving moves. Douglas-Roberts isn’t near the N.B.A. prospect that Rose is, but he showed that he may just be the most effective player in all of college basketball in terms of penetrating in the paint. He scored every way possible — a floater, a leaner and old-fashioned layups.
He finished the first half with 13 and spearheaded the biggest statistical difference in the first half — Memphis’s 10 fast-break points to U.C.L.A.’s 0. Douglas-Roberts also had the highlight play of the first half when he blocked Westbrook’s layup attempt on a fast break.
The biggest surprise for Memphis in the first half came from the play of the reserve forward Shawn Taggart, who scored 7 points and grabbed 7 rebounds off the bench for the Tigers. Taggart hadn’t scored more than 7 points total in eight of the past nine Tiger games.
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