The UAlbany basketball team was set to begin their 2016-17 season at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, on Saturday November 12th.
Those plans have suddenly taken a detour.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ban on state-sponsored, non-essential travel to North Carolina has called for UAlbany to have no option but to pull out of the game, losing a essential early season matchup for Danes Head Coach Will Brown to get an idea of what his team may hold against one of the top teams in the nation.
The ban came from North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which was passed by the state determining that transgender people in the state must use public bathrooms corresponding with their birth gender and eliminating the ability of employees to sue their employers in state court for discrimination or wrongful termination.
SUNY has decided support the Governor’s decision on the ban, and since the University is apart of the SUNY system, they must comply with the ban, forcing the trip to Cameron Indoor to be cancelled.
However though, with the game being apart of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Tipoff, a replacement was quickly found. Tim Wilkin of the Times Union reports that the Danes will now instead open up at Penn State on Friday, November 11th.
And if this sounds familiar to local collegiate athletics fans, it is. The HVCC Baseball team was denied a chance to reach Nationals this past season due to the law, which the school decided to oppose by supporting Cuomo’s travel ban.
Schools like Stony Brook, Binghamton and Buffalo are also affected by the ban because they are SUNY schools are therefore stand by the ban. However, schools like Syracuse and Marist are not because they are private schools. Syracuse is scheduled to play at North Carolina and NC State this upcoming season, and there schedule remains unaffected because they are not subject to the ban,
