Norfolk, Va. — The Georgia season started with Andy Landers wanting to stoke the fires of years past.

His Lady Bulldogs basketball program, long a threat on the national scene, had become a nonfactor. It lacked passion. It lacked aggressiveness. It lacked swagger. Landers wanted it all back.

It only sporadically happened.

Georgia's season, one that featured frustrations and unusual futility, came to an end in an unlikely place, the second round of the NCAA tournament. Top-seeded North Carolina bounced No. 8 seed Georgia 80-66 at the Ted Constant Convocation Center on Tuesday.

For the first time in six years Georgia will not make the trip to the Sweet 16. Instead it will make the trip back to Athens wondering what became of a season that started with such promise.

This was a team that won its first 13 games only to go 10-10 in its next 20. It lost to the traditional powers, Tennessee and LSU. But it also lost to Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Twice.

There was more stagger than swagger. And finally they fell.

This one last time was to one of the new powers of college basketball. North Carolina has become what Georgia used to be and aspires to get back to. This is the Tar Heels' fourth consecutive season as a No. 1 seed. It is also their fourth consecutive year to make it to the Sweet 16.

Georgia proved to be but a brief speed bump on that road. The Lady Bulldogs, accustomed to playing good teams close, showed pieces of that passion and swagger Landers so wanted to see return to his program.

For spurts against North Carolina, Georgia forced the action and the hand of a faster, deeper Tar Heels team.

Angel Robinson, long too genteel in the post, flashed more than a grin for once. Megan Darrah, whose shooting has been hot and cold this season, found a hot streak. In the first half Ashley Houts rarely crumbled under the pressure.

Add it all together, and Georgia had a chance and a lead.

The Lady Bulldogs led by seven late in the first half. A 14-0 run featuring four straight threes from four different people gave Georgia that lead.

But this has been a season of ebbs and flows. Georgia soon ebbed.

North Carolina scored 12 consecutive points to end the half. None of the shots was difficult or contested. All were backbreakers.

Georgia trailed by three at the half. After five straight turnovers to start the second half, the Lady Bulldogs were down 13.

That was it. As quickly as it started, it was over — the game, the season and Tasha Humphrey's career.

The senior was one of the most decorated players in Georgia history. Every season Humphrey played she was named to the all-SEC first team. She was only the third player in league history to be named to the all-conference team every season she played.

Again she was consistent against North Carolina. With fouls piling up around her, Humphrey had to take command of the middle. Humphrey, like the rest of her team, managed for a while. But soon the turnovers and the mental mistakes were too much, so too was the athleticism of North Carolina.

One last brief run cut the lead from 16 to seven in the second half, but Georgia could never regain what it once had.