[|Zach|]

his is not how you do a goodwill tour.
http://deadspin.com/5832159/georgeto...h-chinese-team


The Hoyas are out in China for a four-game swing, and it's all supposed to be about fun and friendship and learning about each other's cultures. Not crooked refs and thrown chairs and Sino-American relations reverting to pre-Nixon levels. The Washington Post's Gene Wang is there for today's game vs. the Bayi Rockets in Beijing, and his Tweet was the first sign of trouble.

Gene's off writing an actual newspaper story, which hopefully goes up before the missiles start flying. (UPDATE: Here it is.) In the meantime, here's an admittedly biased account from the HoyaTalk boards:

Then things got really lopsided on the officiating front in the second quarter. They were in the bonus (five fouls) in the first two minutes of the quarter. The fouls continued- I think we had about 12-14 in the second quarter alone, if I had to guess without seeing a stat sheet (which I doubt will be published). On a couple of plays there was a bit of shoving under the basket, but it calmed down fairly quickly, JT3 clearly called the team over and probably said something along the lines that the officiating was ridiculous, but it didn't matter and everyone needed to stay cool. Then JT3 became more active in pushing the refs for some calls on our end (we were getting mauled, and the PLA team was getting a call basically every time down the court). Despite all of this, we finished the half up 4 or 5- we were shooting really well.

The whole thing came undone in the third. About two minutes in, the ridiculously lopsided foul calls continued (we were in the bonus again 2 1/2 minutes in) and the first real shoving match kicked off over a loose ball. The players on the court separated each other pretty quickly, but then the craziest thing I've ever seen happened- one of the Bayi big men got in JT3's face and almost took a swing. He was so shocked he didn't know what to do. So that upped the ante a bit.

Then the foul calls truly took on a comical dimension. We supposedly fouled them every time down the court, despite some really good defense on some possessions. There were four or five intentional fouls called, giving them four shots each time down the court. JT3 was called for a technical for stepping over the line onto the court. I counted Bayi scoring two field goals in the entire third quarter. I don't know what the count was, but I would not be surprised if they shot 45-50 FTs through three quarters, and we shot 6-10. I honestly think the foul count was likely in the range of 30 or 35 to 5-7. A few exchanges got testy and at one point players had to restrain themselves again. I started joking with some Chinese people in the crowd, who to their credit similarly thought it was a bit ridiculous but were mainly upset that the game had no flow. At the end of the third, despite all of this, we were tied or up two points or so.

Two minutes into the fourth, they were pressing full court, trapped one of our guards (I forget who it was), and then must have pushed or punched him on the ground after he made the outlet pass, because then there was a shoving match and then a bit of a fight, and then the whole thing set off. He tried to get away as quickly as possible as the Chinese players sort of converged on him, and then benches cleared, and then people on the Chinese bench started picking up chairs. Everyone on the other side of the court started fighting as well. Brawl spread all over the court, and then off the court. After it kicked off it immediately became possible for the crowd to get involved, and then they did. As we tried to get the team off the court, bottles (plastic ones, thankfully) came out of the crowd at the team and everyone left. Security was there (sort of), but it was more equivalent to mall cop-quality security rather than actual security. The Georgetown staff wanted the security to get on the floor, but honestly these guys didn't have a clue what to do. They escorted the whole alumni contingent out fairly quickly after that. Game over, 64-64 (following another intentional foul).