Change is coming to the Mississippi High School Activities Association basketball playoffs – again.
Quarterfinal games for boys and girls in all six classes will be played at two sites in North Mississippi and two in South Mississippi. Semifinals will be held at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson and championship games at The Pavilion, the 9,500-seat Ole Miss basketball arena in Oxford.
“The Pavilion is obviously one of the best facilities in the state,” said MHSAA executive director Don Hinton. “We want to have our championship teams play championship games at championship facilities.”
This will be the first time in recent memory that championship games have not been played at the Mississippi Coliseum. Hinton pointed out that a similar change was made for football, moving championship games from Mississippi Memorial Stadium in Jackson to the stadiums at Ole Miss, Mississippi State and the University of Southern Mississippi.
There was also a change made last year with quarterfinals at the home site the higher seeded team and semifinals and finals at the Mississippi Coliseum, eliminating Jackson State University as a site for some of the games.
This year’s change was recommended by the MHSAA staff and approved by the organization's 15-member Executive Committee last Thursday.
Quarterfinal site in North Mississippi are Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena for 2A, 4A and 6A and Itawamba Community College in Fulton for 1A, 3A and 5A. For South Mississippi, sites are the 11,500-seat Mississippi Gulf Coast Coliseum in Biloxi for 2A, 4A and 6A and Pearl River Community College in Poplarville for 1A, 3A and 5A.
The Mississippi Valley arena is the 5,000-seat Harrison HPER Complex. At Itawamba, it is the Davis Event Center with 2,800 seats.
Providing neutral sites for the quarterfinals is the main reason for playing at the four sites,” Hinton said. “The schools did not want to play the quarterfinals on a home court.”
The 48 quarterfinal games are scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 27-29 (2020 is a leap year). The 24 semifinals will be Monday through Wednesday, March 2-4 and the 12 championship games Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 5-7.
This lineup is for one year. “It’s all about availability,” Hinton said. Locations for 2021 will be determined by facilities that are available on the playoff dates.
Future championships could be played at Mississippi State’s Humphrey Coliseum and at Reed Green Coliseum at USM, which is undergoing a $3.5 million renovation. Humphreys Coliseum was unavailable for 2020 because Mississippi State has a home game scheduled for March 7.
Hinton is not concerned that holding championship games in Oxford might prevent fans from South Mississippi making the long drive. “When you play in a championship event, people will go to those events.”
