Fight ends Georgetown basketball exhibition in China 美大学队与中国八一队在中国比赛中发生群殴

Fight ends Georgetown basketball exhibition in China
美大学队与中国八一队在中国比赛中发生群殴

China Daily/Reuters - Players from the Georgetown men's basketball team and China's Bayi fight during an exhibition game at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Arena.

By Gene Wang, Updated: Thursday, August 18, 8:24 AM

BEIJING — What began as a goodwill trip to China for the Georgetown men’s basketball team turned violent Thursday night, when its exhibition game against a Chinese professional club deteriorated into a benches-clearing melee in which players exchanged blows, chairs were thrown and spectators tossed full water bottles at the Hoyas players and coaches as they headed to the locker room.

Georgetown Coach John Thompson III pulled his players off the Olympic Sports Center Stadium court with 9 minutes, 32 seconds left in the game and the scored tied at 64 after a chaotic scene in which members of both the Georgetown and Bayi Military Rockets teams began swinging wildly and tackling one another.

The Washington Post's Gene Wang reports on the brawl that ended a basketball game between the Georgetown Hoyas and Bayi Rockets in Beijing after a Georgetown player was fouled.

There were an estimated half-dozen individual altercations on the court , and eventually some Chinese onlookers joined the fracas, including one wielding a stanchion. As the brawl spilled beyond the baseline, an unidentified Bayi player pushed Georgetown’s Aaron Bowen through a partition to the ground before repeatedly punching the sophomore guard while sitting on his chest.

Georgetown senior center Henry Sims had a chair tossed at him by an unidentified person, and Georgetown freshman forward Moses Ayegba, who was wearing a brace on his right leg, limped onto the court with a chair in his right hand. According to Georgetown officials, Ayegba had been struck, prompting him to grab a chair in self-defense.

The brawl occured one night after Vice President Biden, who is in Beijing on a four-day visit to discuss U.S.-Chinese economic relations, attended a Georgetown game against another Chinese club at the Olympic Sports Center. That game, which was won by Georgetown, passed without incident.

The turbulent ending to Thursday night’s contest marred what had been billed as the second game of a two-day “China-U.S. Basketball Friendship Match” in Beijing. Georgetown intended for the team’s 10-day trip to China to be an athletic, cultural and educational exchange designed to promote the school internationally.

It was unclear whether the brawl would affect similar ventures in the future. The Georgetown delegation, which included university president John DeGioia, other school officials and prominent alumni and boosters, was scheduled to fly to Shanghai on Friday. Thompson said the team would continue with the remainder of its itinerary.

A State Department official and a Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington both called the melee “unfortunate.”

“We look to these types of exchanges to promote good sportsmanship and strengthen our people-to-people contact with China,” said the U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak for attribution.
“We believe the organizers of the matches and the two teams will address the issue properly, the sportsmanship and people-to-people friendship the matches are meant to represent will prevail,” said the Chinese spokesman, Wang Baodong, in an e-mail.

The official China news agency Xinhua did not have an immediate account of the game, and while other prominent Chinese Web sites such as 163.com and sina.com posted stories, government censors shortly thereafter took them down.