Georgetown is a 3-seed this year, which is sort of surprising when you think about their international incident back in August, right? To recap: The Hoyas visited China for a goodwill trip. They ended up facing Bayi Military Rockets in an exhibition game. It did not go well.

On Grantland, Shane Ryan later wrote:

You can’t talk about the Hoyas season without talking about China. In mid-August, John Thompson III’s team left for a four-game, 10-day “Goodwill Tour” of Shanghai and Beijing. On August 18, Georgetown met the Bayi Rockets. It was a typical game on Chinese soil, which meant the officiating was comically one-sided, and it kept the Rockets in the game. Midway through the second half, Bayi had attempted 57 free throws to Georgetown’s 15.

What was less typical for an international friendly was the high tension. As the Washington Post reported, the game paused once when a Bayi player began screaming at Thompson on the sideline, and a second delay came about when another Chinese player received a technical for arguing a call. Bad blood was boiling, but try finding a high-level game without that element. For the most part, anger translates into nothing more dangerous than competitive intensity.