AUGUSTA

The 2017 Class B basketball state championship games, originally scheduled to be held in Portland, will be played on March 3 at the Augusta Civic Center.

That decision was made without dissent Wednesday by the basketball committee of the Maine Principals’ Association in the aftermath of a two-year deal signed in late 2015 that will bring early-round games of the America East women’s basketball tournament to Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena in 2017 and 2018 on the same weekends high school state championship games traditionally have been played there.

America East will hold first-round, quarterfinal and semifinal games on March 4 and 5 in Portland, and the conference that includes the University of Maine also has use of the facility on March 3.

The Maine Principals’ Association committee considered staging the Class B finals elsewhere in the Portland area or in Bangor before deciding on the Augusta site, which already was set to host the 2017 Classes AA and A state finals on March 4 but had no games scheduled for March 3.

“In the end we felt the site in Augusta would be the best way to go,” said Maine Principals’ Association Executive Director Dick Durost. “And that truly is a neutral site because the North Bs are in Bangor and the South Bs are in Portland.

“So now by moving the championship games there, we’re looking at a site where neither region has any sort of home-court advantage, if you will, based upon having played there previously,” he added.

Durost previously said that while officials at the Portland facility historically reserved the dates the Maine Principals’ Association needed for its state finals, newer management that began operating the Cross Insurance Arena in 2015 may have been less familiar with the high school tourney schedule — particularly since the state games essentially will be a week later in 2017 than they were in 2016.