Eleven times champion UCLA bolted to a 15-point lead by halftime en route to a 59-45 victory over Louisiana State, while Florida ended the fairytale run of George Mason with a 73-58 win.

Winning a 12th consecutive game, UCLA (32-6) built a 39-24 lead by halftime to wipe out LSU’s hopes of making its first appearance in the title game.

A jam by senior center Ryan Hollins from an alley-oop pass by sophomore guard Jordan Farmar ended a 6-1 streak by UCLA to open the second half and give the Bruins a 45-25 lead.

"We beat a very good team tonight, an outstanding team," UCLA coach Ben Howland told reporters.

"I thought our intensity defensively for the entire 40 minutes was really, really incredible."

Freshman forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute paced UCLA with 17 points and nine rebounds while Farmar added 12 points.

Glen Davis scored 14 for LSU but the Tigers’ leading scorer was held to five-for-17 shooting from the floor and four-for-10 from the free-throw line.

"They came out and they just punched us," said Davis, who averages nearly 19 points a game. "We didn’t recover from it."

LSU coach John Brady agreed.

"I really compliment them for the first 10 or 12 minutes," he said. "That was the difference in the game. We weren’t able to recover."

Florida, seeking its first national title, broke the game open against George Mason with a 12-2 streak at the start of the second half, turning a five-point lead into a 43-28 cushion with 15 minutes left in the game.

George Mason (27-8), the first school from outside a major conference to make the Final Four in a quarter of a century, gained a national following after beating much larger schools with basketball-rich traditions.

"We came into the game feeling very good about ourselves, feeling very good about our chances," Patriots coach Jim Larranaga said.

"For some reason, we were never able to really establish our rhythm either offensively or defensively."

Junior guard Lee Humphrey and sophomore forward Corey Brewer had 19 points apiece to lead Florida, which had a commanding 40-27 rebounding edge.

Florida coach Billy Donovan said what George Mason has done this year "has been great for college basketball."

"A lot of good players, good coaches and good teams don’t get a chance to experience what they’ve experienced," he said.

"I think in this tournament, they’ve been able to inspire a lot of different people, people that maybe are really, really in need."

George Mason, a commuter school from Fairfax, Va., had never won an NCAA Tournament game before beating Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut over the last two weeks.

Most of the George Mason players were overlooked by the bigger schools.

Larranaga said his players "opened up the eyes of many people, including myself, that you don’t have to have seven-footers on your team or be the biggest and strongest team to have a great basketball team."