SAN ANTONIO ? Thirty-seven minutes, three seconds into the game, Jim Calhoun was at it again.

A whistle blew, the Connecticut coach turned to his bench and lashed out at assistant George Blaney. For three years, Calhoun has been yelling at Blaney, and now, 2:57 from his second national championship, was no time to stop.

Not with the Huskies up by 12. Not with the Huskies playing with zeal and fervor, with passion and sheer dominance. No, he gave Blaney an evil eye 30 seconds later, had cross words for likely lottery pick Ben Gordon with 1:05 to go, and then again for Blaney with less than 43 seconds to play and the Alamodome crowd filing out.

Jim Calhoun didn’t stop working Monday night. And neither did the Huskies. Not till they’d captured the national title they’d been picked to win back in September, not till Georgia Tech valiantly went down, 82-73.

“This is the best feeling in the world,” said Gordon, the standout UConn guard who scored 21 points. “I just keep on telling myself that I would not be denied and that I would not let my team lose no matter what.”

All-America center Emeka Okafor had his say in the matter, leading the winners with 24 points and 15 rebounds.

Calhoun said of his players: “I fell in love with them.”

Denham Brown came to the bench with a smile and a head slap for Charlie Villanueva with 40 seconds to go, two handfuls of former Connecticut standouts — led by Ray Allen — filed behind the bench with 30 seconds to go, Alamodome personnel readied confetti rockets with 20 seconds left, and then, with one second to play, Calhoun finally pumped his fists, finally smiled at his bench.

“We did have a big lead at halftime, and I wanted to make sure we were going to stand on the podium after the game,” Calhoun said. “With about six minutes to play, Georgia Tech started making a lot of threes — more then I can count. That made us a little nervous.”

The game had not been in doubt since midway through the first half, but Calhoun’s Huskies, the ones carrying heavy expectations all season, weren’t leaving anything to chance.

They played a nearly flawless game, holding Georgia Tech to 38 percent shooting and limiting 7-foot-1 Luke Schenscher to a pedestrian nine points and 11 rebounds. Okafor had 15 boards, and five other Huskies had six boards apiece as Connecticut dominated on the glass. Gordon added 21 points, and Rashad Anderson had 18 on a night when the Huskies took very few bad shots and crisply executed their offense.

The game was won long before halftime, as the Huskies upped their lead to 12 when Taliek Brown’s layup made it 28-16 with 8:56 to go in the first half.

Before the game, the Huskies’ coaches admitted they feared Georgia Tech’s physicality along the perimeter. The Yellow Jackets’ strong guards if not manhandled, had at least handled the Huskies’ guards in the team’s first meeting, a 77-61 win by Tech in the preseason NIT. But UConn used its speed and finesse early this time, repeatedly driving by the slower Jackets.

And the Jackets, who had shown such poise in making a remarkable tournament run, apparently were so besieged by nerves, they couldn’t hit their free throws.

Semifinal hero Will Bynum made an enormously tough layup, driving past three Oklahoma State players Saturday to put Georgia Tech in the finals. But Monday, he missed the front ends of consecutive one-and-ones, and then, given a chance to redeem himself, he missed again. With five seconds to go before the break, Bynum drew a second foul on Okafor and went to the line, Georgia Tech down, 39-26.

With a relative yelling from the stands, “Yes you can, Will,” Bynum clanked the first, and then the second, free throw.

Okafor pulled down the miss, and the 6-foot-10 All-American rocketed it out to a streaking Rashad Anderson. Pulling up, Anderson hit a long jumper, swinging Georgia Tech’s halftime deficit from what could have been a manageable 11 — had Bynum, an 80 percent free throw shooter, made the free throws — to a much more frightening 15 at 41-26.

The Yellow Jackets shot badly from everywhere through the first half, hitting just two of 10 from long range, four of 11 from the charity stripe and just 29.4 percent from anywhere on the floor. The Huskies, meanwhile, worked frenetically everywhere, scoring off every one of Georgia Tech’s six turnovers, and camping under the glass, maniacally tipping out misses and hustling for loose balls.

Georgia Tech took a brief lead at 12-11 after a 5-0 run, but the preseason favorite Huskies stopped toying with the in-season surprise. They scored 10 unanswered points in a run that featured a real smile from the notoriously grim game-faced Calhoun and a fake-pass three from Gordon that even faked out the alleged recipient in Anderson.

After Okafor laid in — backwards — a bounce pass from freshman Josh Boone 13:15 into the game, UConn only got one more first half-field goal. But with the Jackets missing free throws (6) and the Huskies making theirs’ (7), UConn added one point to its lead.