The Georgetown men’s basketball team has set off on the trip of a lifetime, touring China while engaging in a number of basketball-related activities, including several games against Chinese professional teams. Those conditioned to near-constant media coverage of nearly every sporting event might be unfulfilled by relying on occasional tweets, only slightly bemused by photos of your Hoyas scaling the Great Wall, or frustrated by the lack of video (what’s ESPN3 doing this summer, anyway?) of the Hoyas in action.
The last 24-plus hours should have sated even the most voracious Hoya fan’s appetite. First, we got real basketball action, highlighted by a real Vice Presidential visit. Yesterday, this year’s Hoyas took the floor as a team for the first time, dispatching the Shanxi Brave Dragons, 98-81. The game started off on the right foot with a visit from Vice President Joe Biden, who separately had scheduled a trip to China. He addressed the team before the game, apparently telling various amusing tall tales and slapping a few backs, and leaving a positive mark on the Hoyas’ impressionable young minds.
It is unclear how much to make of the Hoyas’ seventeen-point victory. Somewhat dated results about the Brave Dragos suggest an inglorious past, and their former employment of a post-face-tattoo, post-Vaseline-eating Stephon Marbury couldn’t get the Brave Dragons to the playoffs (a far East echo of Starbury’s NBA career). So, Georgetown didn’t stare down the Chinese version of the Celtics.
CBA disgressions aside, yesterday was more learning about next year’s squad in its own right than sizing it up against competition. There were questions about the starting lineup; the box score suggests JTIII began with an unsurprising expected combination of Jason Clark, Henry Sims, Markel Starks, Hollis Thompson and Nate Lubick. Coach Thompson spread the minutes generously, giving nine Hoyas, including all five freshmen, at least twenty minutes of burn in the forty-eight minute contest. The offensive output also was balanced, as six Hoyas scored in double figures, led by freshman Otto Porter’s 16 and complemented by encouraging showings by Starks, Sims, and Jabril Trawick. Georgetown built a thirteen-point halftime lead and held the advantage in double digits after intermission. It’s hard to read too much into the, um, tea leaves, given the uncertain strength of the opponent, but early returns are encouraging.
The second game, against the Bayi Rockets, came to a premature and stormy end. The Rockets, the Chinese Army’s team, sport a somewhat more impressive history than the Brave Dragons, and a roster highlighted by onetime NBA player Wang Zhizhi. The Hoyas and Rockets played a neck-and-neck game; after the Hoyas pulled ahead by five near the end of the third, the margin was just two with eleven minutes to play.
Then, mayhem broke out. According to the Post’s Gene Wang, tensions were high throughout the game. This may have been because of possibly shady officiating, as the Hoyas were whistled for 28 first-half fouls, the Rockets just 11, while the hosts sported a 57-15 free throw advantage. Another Rocket “berated” JTIII, who was trying to give instructions to his players, while Nate Lubick and still another opposing player exchanged some sweet nothings. The chippiness escalated with nine-plus minutes remaining when a Chinese player committed an extra hard foul on Clark. (Update: see video of the entire incident here.)
Clark, having been taken down, reacted by shoving the fouler. Both benches cleared, plastic bottles were hurled from the stands, and chairs thrown, including one at Sims. Thompson removed the Hoyas from the court, apparently to their safety. Photographs of the incident corroborate tweets and other instant accounts, though at least one photograph suggests that the Rockets were clearly the aggressors. A post-game statement from JTIII, classy as ever, expresses regret over the incident without much mention of the Hoyas’ role in it.
More updates and links follow as we get them.
