Sprinting from the smoldering wreckage, racing to the sunny regionals, Russell Westbrook soared through the Anaheim night and slammed down the punctuation dunk and finished with the perfect description.

He screamed.

He screamed, and maybe you didn't hear him because you were screaming too.

"No words, just screaming," Westbrook said. "Screaming because we won. Screaming because it was over."

If UCLA wins the national championship, you will remember that scream, because the Bruins will have won that championship in its echo.

They will have won it Saturday in a 53-49 second-round victory over Texas A&M that should have been a loss.

They will have won it after being pummeled and pushed and beaten in broad brush strokes in the paint.

They will have won it with six of their eight players tied behind their backs.

They will have won it after trailing for all but a minute and a half of the second win.

That win came in the final moments with a layup, a blocked shot, a final dunk, and then chaos.

The 17,600 folks at the Honda Center roared like perhaps no UCLA crowd has ever roared.

I'm writing these words 90 minutes after the final buzzer, and my ears are still ringing.

The exhausted, ecstatic Bruins celebrated like few UCLA teams celebrate, dancing and hugging and filling the hockey arena with an incredible heat.

I'm writing these words in a chilly tunnel next to the court, but my shirt is soaking wet.

Finally, the beaten Aggies team despaired like few teams despair, some of them collapsing in tears, a couple of them nearly coming to blows during their final angst-filled midcourt huddle.

In their locker room later, they shuffled through piles of dirty clothes and trash as if walking through the scene of a robbery.

"UCLA won it, but we should have won it," whispered Aggies guard Donald Sloan. "And seven out of 10 times, we do win it."

Yeah, but Westbrook screamed and Sloan whispered because the Bruins did win it, just like they've always won these game in the Ben Howland era.

"We don't crack," said Darren Collison. "We play until there's zero-zero-zero up there on the board."

This is not the most amazing tournament win in the Howland era -- that title still belongs to the 2006 regional semifinal comeback victory against Gonzaga.