Note to basketball fans in the state of North Carolina: Don’t mess with the greater D.C. metro area.

You would have thought you learned your lesson last year, when George friggin’ Mason spanked the Tar Heels and sent you home from the NCAA basketball tourney. You would have thought that Duke, which gets tortured by Maryland almost every year and got clubbed at home by Georgetown earlier this season, would have clued you Tar Heels fans in…but no.

As a result, it was Georgetown’s turn this year to bring the pain. Now, your elimination by Mason last year, as you rebuilt from your 2005 NCAA title and the subsequent stripping of your talent by the NBA, was at least a little understandable (especially after Mason beat last year’s best team, Connecticut).

This year, though, you were fully reloaded and seemingly on a drive to win another title. I don’t think so.

Sure, you’ve all been trained in faking fouls whenever an opposing player so much as generates a breeze in your direction, and the refs went along for a half in the Georgetown game (even after John Thompson III went nuts) before they caught on. In the end, though, Georgetown beat you by playing smarter and tougher when it counted. They tore you into little pieces and you and your deep bench were beaten up in overtime as though you were all schoolgirls facing the toughest guys in school. Goodbye.

Next up for the Hoyas: Ohio State. I really think Georgetown can put the hurt on the Buckeyes and play for the national title. Unfortunately, I think the *real* national title bout will be played on the other side of the bracket, where UCLA and Florida are truly scary and where I suspect the winner should be able to dispatch Georgetown.

But the basketball-rabid state of North Carolina has been denied yet still again another title, which will send people there into a fit, and that makes the entire NCAA tournament worthwhile as far as I’m concerned.