San Antonio —- It was John Calipari's little joke: Between UCLA and Memphis, he noted Friday, the programs have combined to win 11 NCAA titles.

This is no joke: If there's to be a 12th national championship won by the Bruins and the Tigers, it won't be going back to California. It'll be paraded down Beale Street, borne by the team that spent three seasons winning nearly all its games but only in the past 10 days has won the unchallenged respect of a basketball-watching nation.

Memphis beat UCLA here Saturday by 15 points, and six minutes in, you knew the Tigers would win. You knew because they'd scored on nine consecutive possessions against the Bruins, who keep reaching the Final Four by virtue of their barbed-wire defense. You knew because the Bruins, who can guard anybody, couldn't guard Memphis.

It's possible nobody can guard Memphis, not with its dribble-drive motion offense and the players who keep dribble-driving every opponent to distraction. Russell Westbrook was voted the Pac-10's best defender this season, but the problem was that the guys from Westwood had only one Westbrook.

Memphis had both Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Westbrook couldn't guard both. (Or, to be blunt, either.) He tried, but whichever one he wasn't defending did essentially as he wanted. The freshman Rose overpowered Darren Collison, regarded by many as the nation's best point guard, to the extent that the Bruins leader decided, with 2:53 remaining and his team down 11, to commit his fifth foul at midcourt for no good reason. It was a gesture of surrender.

"We played like we played all year," said Calipari, the Memphis coach. "We defended. We made it hard for them. The reality of it is: I've got a good team."

How good? Well, UCLA lost in the 2006 and 2007 Final Fours to Florida, the greatest team of the past 30 years. From what Ben Howland saw of Memphis, would the Bruins coach put the Tigers in the same exalted class? "They both have strengths in all areas," he said. "They can play at any pace ... They're similar in a lot of respects."

UCLA's best players are Collison and Kevin Love. The former made one basket and had more fouls and turnovers (five apiece) than assists (four). Love made one second-half basket and was outrebounded 15-9 by the Tigers' Joey Dorsey.

"Going into the game, we knew we were going to win," said Rose, who scored 25 points, took nine rebounds and made four assists. "There really isn't too much to say."

There really wasn't. The massive freshman Love was winded in the first half, and the other Bruins weren't exactly light on their feet. Rose again: "They were fatigued. It was like, 'I'm not going to take another jump shot.' That was crazy. I was going to go to the hole."

And UCLA could do nothing to stop him or Douglas-Roberts, who scored 28. This, you should know, is the UCLA that was believed to be the better-coached side. Said Calipari: "Whoever the small man [Collison] was on, he was going to post up ... Whoever had that guy on him, that's who we went after."

That, folks, is Coaching 101. John Robert Wooden —- who steered UCLA to 10 of those 11 titles —- could have done no better. And to think: A homespun column in Saturday's Los Angeles Times characterized this game as "a coaching mismatch."

When someone asked the Memphis players about the story, Calipari broke in: "C'mon, Ben's not that bad."

Another joke. Again, the assembled media laughed hard and long. But at this late date nobody's giggling harder and longer than these Tigers.

"The negativity [toward his team, now 38-1] was silly the whole year," Douglas-Roberts said. "When we hear that stuff, we just laugh."

For Memphis, there's one game to go. One more punchline waiting to be cracked. A first national championship there to be won.

mbradley@ajc.com

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