It’s Gators all over again

There was nothing to be done about Florida’s celebrating. Not when Chris Richard was slamming in a basket and Joakim Noah pulled up his shirt and bellowed, not when Corey Brewer was exaggerating his follow-through on a three-pointer or double pumping his fists after another.

Florida, the defending national champion, pummeled UCLA with slam dunks and blocked shots, tortured the Bruins with three-point shooting and left them to endure another celebration by the Gators at the Final Four on Saturday night at the Georgia Dome.

For the second straight year, Florida ended UCLA’s season with a definitive loss. The Gators won in the NCAA semifinals this time, 76-66. Last year it was a 73-57 win in the national championship game, but this was no better for UCLA.

Florida (34-5) will play Ohio State on Monday and will try to become the first team since Duke in 1991 and 1992 to win consecutive national championships. The Gators beat the Buckeyes, 86-60, in Gainesville last December. It will also be the first time the same schools who played for the national football title (Florida won in January) will meet for the NCAA basketball title.

The Bruins (30-6) are left to hope Noah, Al Horford, Taurean Green, Brewer -- one of them, all of them -- leave college after their junior seasons and stop torturing UCLA.

Junior Arron Afflalo, UCLA’s leader in scoring and presence, an All-American and the Pacific 10 Conference player of the year, was left scoreless until there was 6:18 left and UCLA was behind, 58-42, in what might be his final college game. Afflalo considered leaving for the NBA last year and will need to make that decision again.

On Saturday night he was left to consider that his first basket was a three-pointer that meant nothing. Scoring 17 points in the final six minutes was no consolation. He was brought down by early foul trouble (two in the first 1:50, three in the first 10 minutes) and beaten down by Florida’s physical defense.

In the two UCLA losses to Florida, Afflalo made only eight of 24 shots. He said while last year’s loss was painful, this was heartbreaking.

“I was the leader of this team,” Afflalo said. “More was expected of us and of me.”

Center Lorenzo Mata had red-rimmed eyes and no explanation for the fact Florida outrebounded UCLA, 43-26, that Horford had 17 rebounds and Noah 11, that the Gators blocked six UCLA shots. “They were just better,” Mata said.

Backup center Alfred Aboya sat alone in a corner with his head buried in a towel. “I thought we had a good game plan,” Aboya said. “We had a week to prepare. I thought we were ready.”

Darren Collison, UCLA’s third-leading scorer, didn’t make a basket until the Bruins were trailing, 51-34, with 9:26 left in the game and was three for 14 from the floor. Only Josh Shipp, who had sat out last year’s loss because of a hip injury, could offer any early offense.

The sophomore had 14 of UCLA’s 23 points in the first half and was the main reason UCLA was within six, 29-23, at halftime. And that slim deficit seemed reason to hope.

“We’re losing our leading scorer and our best defender,” Coach Ben Howland said of missing Afflalo in the first half. “Obviously that’s a lot to overcome. I thought we did a pretty good job of it for the most part to only be down six and have the ball coming out of halftime.”

But Florida also looked at it as a positive. Noah and Horford didn’t take a shot in the first half. They passed well out of UCLA’s double teams and trusted their jump shooters.

And there was a game altering 3 1/2 minutes of play in the first half that gave a taste of what Florida would do in the second.

The Bruins had two shots blocked, had four missed layups and went from a 16-16 tie to a 26-16 deficit. “I don’t know what happened there,” Collison said. “It just got away for a minute.”

Afflalo was still on the bench to start the second half because Howland said he couldn’t have his star get a fourth foul in the first minutes.

Michael Roll made a three-pointer with 18:42 left to bring UCLA within four points, 32-28. That was UCLA’s first three-pointer of the game after eight misses in the first half but it was followed immediately by a Lee Humphrey three-pointer and a 17-4 Florida running, dunking, bumping, rebounding extravaganza that blew the game open.

“We knew our post guys were not going to get any shots,” Florida Coach Billy Donovan said. “We tried to use Al Horford in the first half as a passer. He did a great job I thought of throwing the ball diagonally across to Lee Humphrey [14 points], throwing it out to Corey Brewer [19].”

There wasn’t much to fault in UCLA’s early defensive effort, but the struggle to score, especially without Afflalo, was draining.

The Bruins had only three turnovers in the game and Florida had 16 and there was a sense that was because the Gators weren’t afraid to be offensively creative.

“We shot 39% for the game,” Howland said. “You have to shoot and do better than that to beat a great team.”

For two years running, the Bruins haven’t been able to do it.

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diane.pucin@latimes.com

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Statistics bear Florida’s dominating performance:

*--* UCLA FLORIDA Field goals 25-64 (.391) 24-45 (.533) Free throws 11-13 (.846) 19-31 (.613) 3-Pointers 5-23 (.217) 9-22 (.409) Rebounds 26 43 Blocks 0 6

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*--* AFFLALO FACTOR Arron Affalo didn’t score until 6:18 remained, drawing UCLA within 58-45: 33:41 6:18 Total Points 0 17 17 Field goals 0-6 5-8 5-14 3-Pointers 0-4 3-5 3-9 Free throws 0-0 4-4 4-4

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Los Angeles Times