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GREENSBORO— Scheduling the Pizza Hut Invitational high school basketball tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum around the Duke-UNCG basketball game and a wrestling tournament was hard enough. Then a snowstorm on the East Coast mucked up plans.

The invitational’s start moved from Monday to today, which means that second-round games must now fit around the Southern Scuffle college wrestling tournament early Wednesday.

Before the snow, organizers had no games of the Pizza Hut Invitational schedule planned Wednesday.

“All along we had a tight schedule,” said Randy Cobb, one of the chairmen of the invitational. “That’s why we went with a Monday-Tuesday-Thursday.”

On Sunday, with more than a half-foot of snow outside, Cobb held conference calls with Guilford County Schools officials and invitational officials to work on the schedule. The start was pushed back primarily for safety reasons. While main roads might have been clear, ice still covered some side roads.

“It was a beautiful white Christmas, but it was a challenge for us,” he said.

Games will be played in the Special Events Center at the coliseum, as planned, but on another day. Two games are moving to the coliseums’s main floor Wednesday because the Southern Scuffle will take up room in the Special Events Center. Timing also is an issue: Organizers wanted to finish the tournament before Friday, after learning from the 2009 tournament to avoid games on New Year’s Eve.

“Last year it really hurt attendance” because fans had other plans, Cobb said. Some invitational games moved to different times so they could be played around other events at the coliseum, but it made for some tough scheduling on players. The winner of today’s 6:30 p.m. boys game between Northeast Guilford and Northern Guilford will play again at 10 a.m. Wednesday, and the 8 p.m. boys game winner between Page and Grimsley will follow at 11:30 a.m.

“We tried to get in that day to start as early as possible,” Cobb said, “and not have the kids play basketball with a stomach full of Cheerios from breakfast.”

Both girls games are scheduled in the Special Events Center at 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., near the 7 p.m. tip time for Duke-UNCG.

“We are trying to make it work with the close time frame,” Cobb said.

Plus, fans will be arriving for the Southern Scuffle, which starts at 10 a.m.

“It’s a real testament to the coliseum facilities that we can do all of this,” Cobb said.

But after the Texas-UNC game Dec. 18, when parking and traffic complaints were sounded in the community, the added events could complicate matters.

More than 20,000 people and 5,000 cars are expected for the Duke-UNCG game. That would be a similarly sized crowd to what the Texas-UNC game drew.

Coliseum deputy director Scott Johnson blamed the final Saturday of Christmas shopping and afternoon snow flurries for the traffic issues Dec. 18.

“People in the South, as far as our events, they don’t tend to arrive early,” he said.

Worries about traffic for the Duke-UNCG game can be eased if ticket holders will plan to arrive at least an hour early.

“The first thing I would say is no one should ever plan to scoot in and out,” Johnson said, “regardless of whether the event is here or elsewhere.”

Traffic and scheduling notwithstanding, there’s a chance for serious sports fans to get several levels of competition in one place Wednesday.

“Some may come over and make a day of it,” Cobb said. “There will be two games in the morning in the main arena, hopefully they’ll catch some of that, and some of the others, and get down the street and hit a restaurant, and then come back.”

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com