updated 4:13 a.m. ET March 25, 2007

SAN JOSE, Calif. - With good-natured shoves and claps, the UCLA Bruins formed a circle around Arron Afflalo — the rightful center of attention.

In an exceptional second half that should help erase memories of his past mediocrity in big games, Afflalo scored 15 of his 24 points and the Bruins held off the top-seeded Jayhawks for a 68-55 victory in the West Regional final Saturday night.

Afflalo, hiding behind the souvenir hat and T-shirt from the biggest game of his career, tried to be just one of the guys — even though he was the main reason UCLA is heading back to the Final Four for a second consecutive season.

“I don’t really think about it during the game, but when you’re making shots, you’re gaining confidence,” said Afflalo, who made all six of his shots after halftime. “My teammates showed a lot of confidence in me. If I’m fortunate enough to make shots — just keep shooting, keep playing. That has to be a scorer’s mentality.”

Darren Collison added 14 points and four big free throws in the final seconds while leading the Bruins’ stellar defensive effort — but whenever the Bruins faced offensive trouble, Afflalo seemed to solve it, hitting a big shot or drawing the defense to set up a teammate.

Second-seeded UCLA (30-5) made its halftime lead stand up in an appropriately tense meeting between two schools with rich traditions and a combined 29 Final Four appearances — including an NCAA-record 17th for UCLA next week in Atlanta. The Bruins edged ahead of North Carolina, which has 16 going into Sunday’s East Regional final against Georgetown.

The Bruins, who lost to Florida in last season’s national title game, could be in for a rematch: They’ll meet Sunday’s winner of the Gators’ regional final against Oregon.

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“We do feel like we’ve been here before, and we know what to expect,” Collison said. “We felt that we didn’t finish the job last year, so we’re going to enjoy this moment, and then go back and try to finish it.”

When Afflalo’s teammates surrounded him, the UCLA fans chanted “One more year!” at the smiling junior. He acknowledged the cheers with a wave of both hands, but quickly slipped back into team-speak when he returned to the locker room.

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“It really wasn’t me individually,” Afflalo said. “It was the whole mind-set of our entire team. I was just fortunate enough to make some jump shots tonight.”

Brandon Rush scored 18 points for the Jayhawks (33-5), the first No. 1 seed to be eliminated from the tournament. Their 14-game winning streak also was snapped in the school’s first NCAA tournament loss in California, where this game had a decided home-court feel for the Bruins.

“I think we beat ourselves, but I have to give credit to their defense,” said Rush, among several Jayhawks soon to be considering jumps to the NBA. “We just did some dumb stuff — dumb plays on defense and dumb plays on offense. We just had careless turnovers.”

The teams combined for 32 steals and 46 turnovers — yet both thought the game wasn’t particularly sloppy. Two strong defensive teams collided, but Afflalo and his teammates also had the strength of experience.

“I’ll give them credit, because they caused a lot of problems themselves,” Collison said. “We had a lot of mistakes we normally don’t make, and you’ve got to give credit to a good defense — but we battled through it.”

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