Sac-Joaquin Section announces basketball finals to be played at Pacific

Whether you called it Arco Arena, Power Balance Pavilion or Sleep Train Arena, the home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings has been home to the Sac-Joaquin Section basketball finals for the past 30 years.

But with the Kings moving to a downtown Sacramento facility this season, that association will come to an end, Commissioner Mike Garrison announced Thursday at the section’s annual media day event.

Unable to secure an agreement with the Kings to play at their new Golden 1 Center, the section will hold all championship contests March 3-4 at Pacific in Stockton.

Golden 1 Center, however, has a two-year deal in place to host CIF state championship games.

“They did try to work with us to try and do some things and they said, ‘We want to have you back the following year,’ ” said Garrison, beginning his third season as commissioner. “We’ll see what it looks like. And who knows? We could be back at Golden 1 the following year, next year we could be somewhere else, or we could be at UOP for the next 20 years.

“It might actually be a good thing for us, to see what it’s like being somewhere else.”

The section also announced that it is revving up work on league realignment, which will go into effect at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Every four years, to help maintain competitive balance, the section shuffles teams in and out of its 26 conferences. Schools must submit suggestions by Oct. 3, when the work of framing new alignments begins.

“Until that point, all of this is just our opinion,” said assistant commissioner Ryan Tos.

The section lays the foundation for realignment and then submits a plan to the realignment committee, which will be elected on Oct. 5. After the realignment committee hammers out an acceptable plan, it is then sent to the board of managers for final approval.

Whatever realignment looks like in 2018-19, it will take effect earlier than previous plans.

The section announced that starting 2018-19, the athletic calendar will be moved forward one week. Teams will play two games in August and section finals will be contested Thanksgiving weekend instead of in December.

“The state actually has been talking about this for a couple of years,” said Garrison. “The state did a couple of years ago, and 80 to 90 percent of our schools across the state of California – that’s 1,500-plus high schools – were starting in August, no longer on that old schedule of starting Labor Day and ending in the middle of June. So, with that, they’ve chosen to move the athletic calendar.”

In addition to football moving up its season kickoff, basketball and track also will be affected, though baseball and softball will remain on the same time frame since those have no regional or state championship rounds.

Another change announced by the section is a rule that puts a pitch limit on baseball pitchers.

In the past, pitchers were limited to 10 innings or three appearances per week. Now, a pitch-count component will be added.

“The state stepped in and developed a statewide pitch-count rule that will go before the Federated Council in October and be voted upon in January and go into immediate effect this spring,” said Garrison. “The pitch counts are a little higher for varsity than for junior varsity and it takes into account the number of days rest depending on how many pitches.”

The section also opened up its books and showed how much income was generated from postseason events – and football still is the undisputed champ.

During the 2015-16 school year, the section brought in more than $815,000. Football was responsible for about 58 percent of that, raking in better than $472,000. Basketball was the next closest, bringing in nearly $158,000.

Softball was the big loser – nearly $17,000 in the red, due to exorbitant travel expenses.

This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Sac-Joaquin Section announces basketball finals to be played at Pacific."