The bench-clearing brawl during last weeks exhibition game between the Georgetown Hoyas and Chinas Bayi Rockets was merely the latest incident in a long-simmering conflict between Asias most powerful country and the college basketball team, historians confirmed Monday. Tensions between the two have been mounting ever since then-coach Buddy OGrady came out against Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution of 1949, said Georgetown professor Anthony DelDonna, adding that Allen Iversons visit to Taiwan in 1994, during which the point guard officially recognized the sovereignty of the island state, brought the communist nation and the college to the brink of all-out war. The only surprise is that anybody made it out of this basketball game alive. The Chinese spent much of the 1980s trying to assassinate Patrick Ewing. Though further conflicts may be temporarily averted by Georgetown coach John Thompson III and Chinese president Hu Jintaos agreement to let U.N. peacekeepers officiate games, intelligence reports indicate the Hoyas are now only six months away from completing their first nuclear weapon. 