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Florida rode excellent defense and good shooting to a 73-57 win over the UCLA bruins. Florida’s attack was balanced with four players in double digits along with Adrian Moss’ nine-point contribution off the Gator bench. Florida coach (and maybe the most well-groomed man in the country) Billy Donovan became the second-youngest coach (Bobby Knight, 35) at 40 years of age to win the National Championship.

The Gators controlled the first half, forcing and capitalizing on eight UCLA turnovers en route to a 36-25 halftime lead. UCLA made the mistake of playing Florida’s game, pushing the ball when they should have been walking it up. Corey Brewer had a big first half, scoring seven points but, more importantly, he shut down UCLA’s leading scorer, Arron Afflalo. Joakim Noah broke the title game record of block shots with five in the first half, a prediction that CBS’ Billy Packer made at the beginning of the game. Packer never misses an opportunity to point out when he’s right, but with Noah coming into the game averaging over four blocks per tournament game, Billy is hardly Nostradamus. Jordan Farmar led all scorers with 12 points in the half, carrying UCLA’s offensive load and keeping the Bruins within striking distance.

UCLA needed to get off to a good start in the second half, but Florida drained three early shots from behind the arc to give the Gators an 18-point lead that was too deep a hole for the Bruins to dig out of. UCLA cut the lead to 12 with 5:52 to play, but were never able to close the gap further. Brewer continued to harrass Afflalo, who managed just 10 points on 3-10 shooting. But it was Joakim Noah who won the Final Four MVP, finishing with 16 points, eight rebounds, three assists, two steals and a NCAA Championship record six blocked shots.

All in all, it was a rather anti-climactic Final Four after the previous weekends were maybe the most exciting of any tournament in history. That had a lot to do with Florida, who proved that they were playing ball at the highest level in the country.

The pretenders are all gone. So are the Cinderellas. The two remaining teams are simply playing the best ball at the right time of the year, but only one can win the title. So who will it be?

Florida goes into the game as a one-point favorite, led by four sophomores – Joakim Noah, Taurean Green, Corey Brewer and Al Horford. The other starter, Lee Humphrey, is a three-point specialist who hit six from long range in the Gators’ win against George Mason. They are balanced offensively and have been playing great defense as well, containing their opponents’ big men while harrassing their three-point shooters.

Offensively, the Gators will find the going tough against the Bruins. UCLA’s defense during the tournament has been superb, allowing their opponents just 52.8 ppg over the first five games. They matchup well with the Gators defensively, Ryan Hollins should be able to counter Noah, while Luc Richard Mbah a Moute tries to handle Horford. The question with UCLA is – will they be able to score enough to get the win?

These two teams are very evenly matched and barring one team being completely off their game, I think it is basically a tossup. I’m going to go with the Bruins as they’ve shown more late game grit, while Florida, aside from the Georgetown game, has had pretty easy going thus far in the tourney. Mentally, I think that UCLA feels they are a team of destiny after their unlikely victory over Gonzaga in the Regional Semifinals.

The over/under (127.5) seems high. I think this game will be in the 50’s. Both teams play great defense and I suspect the shooting might be a bit off early on as the players feel the pressure. After two boring semifinal games, I sure hope this one is a thriller. It promises to be a good one.