SAN ANTONIO ? With their All-America center on the bench in foul trouble, the Connecticut Huskies no longer looked like the team many people expected to win the national championship.

Then Emeka Okafor came back. And so did the rest of the Huskies — all the way into the national-championship game.

Okafor scored all 18 of his points in the second half and was his usual intimidating self on defense, carrying Connecticut to a stunning 79-78 victory over Duke in the national semifinal Saturday night.

“For the first half I wasn’t even in this,” Okafor said. “I was trying to keep myself in the game, keep my head in it. This is a lifetime opportunity, we earned it.”

Next up for the Huskies (32-6) is Georgia Tech, a 67-65 winner over Oklahoma State in the other semifinal. For UConn, Monday night’s game will be chance for its second national title, which would make it the first preseason No. 1 to win the championship since Kentucky in 1996.

While the Huskies obviously wouldn’t have advanced without Okafor’s play, it’s worth noting how much better everyone else played when he was in there.

Freshman Josh Boone no longer had to man the middle; he was a complement, free to lurk around the paint. Sharpshooter Ben Gordon faced a softer defense because someone had to stick close to No. 50 underneath.

To put Okafor’s value in numerical terms, UConn’s shooting percentage shot up from 39.3 in the first half to 62.5 percent in the second.

As for how the defense changed, just ask Luol Deng, who cooled from 12 points in the first half to four in the second, missing out on two when Okafor rejected a dunk attempt.

Knowing the nation’s top shot-blocker was behind them made defensive duties easier on all the other Huskies. While Duke’s shooting percentage actually went up, it took 15 fewer shots, a clear indication of how much Okafor disrupted the Blue Devils’ flow.

The best indication, though, is how sloppy UConn was without him, after he went to the bench with 16:05 left in the first half after getting two fouls in less than a minute. The Huskies wound up with as many first-half turnovers as field goals (11).

Connecticut’s defense without Okafor wasn’t much better, allowing Duke to score 30 points in the paint, many during a 15-1 run that put UConn behind by seven at halftime.

But it wasn’t enough. Not with Okafor playing all but two minutes in the second half — and getting only one more foul.