It’s that part of the college basketball schedule where top-tier teams like Duke schedule non-conference patsies like Albany to smack around as a warm-up to the REAL season.
The small schools play along for the money and because they can tell recruits that “you’ll get to play at Duke!”
And it’s a pretty good payday for the smaller teams. Average is somwhere between half a mil or better. If they were contracted to play and have no real excuse then they may end up owing Duke some money. I guess Albany has plenty of cash just laying around. I don’t know if full schedules are out yet but Duke will have an easier time finding a replacement team than Butthurt U will.