The Athens Drive girls basketball team will host its third annual Hoops for Hope game tonight against Apex.

Pink T-shirts, bracelets, flower arrangements and college memorabilita will be on sale. All proceeds from the fund-raising go to the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. Last year's game raised more than $2,800.

The junior varsity game starts at 6 p.m., followed by the varsity contests at 7:30.

A lot can happen from now till the end of the week when it comes to the
Tri-Nine Conference boys basketball standings. First, you'll need to know the standings entering
this week. The top five spots have state playoff tie-ins UNLESS a team
ranked lower than fifth wins the conference tournament.

Here's a chart showing each team's conference record with how many games they have left and where:

Now follow along as best you can. The possibilities are seemingly endless:

• Apex has locked up No. 1 outright
• Middle Creek, Panther Creek and Cary could all wind up in second place. It's likely that one or more of the teams will tie. If that happens, the tiebreaker for a home playoff game would go to the team that goes the farthest in the conference tournament.
• Cary is perhaps the most flexible team. They could finish tied for second, win that tiebreaker and enter the tournament on the opposite side of the bracket from Apex. Or they could lose twice and watch Athens win all three to overtake them for fourth. Or they could lose twice and watch Athens win two of three and win a tiebreaker for fifth. And in this tournament, nobody wants to finish fifth if they don't have to.
• Athens needs to win to get in. Nobody behind them can amass seven conference wins. The Jags will have three chances at that this week, two coming against top-3 teams.
• Fuquay-Varina is out of contention for fifth. They were swept by Athens, which means even if the Bengals win and the Jags lose out, AD would have that tiebreaker.
• Green Hope is also out of contention for fifth, but not necessarily locked in for the play-in game. With the right breaks, they could still be the 6-seed.
• Fuquay and Lee were two of the hottest teams last month. Lee has won five of their last six while F-V went 4-4 in January.

The Carolina RailHawks will be without its 2009 Defensive Player of the Year in 2010. Defender Jeremy Tolleson retired from professional soccer today at the age of 27.

In a team press release, Tolleson said he was retiring to pursue mission work in Honduras.

All three of his professional seasons in soccer were with RailHawks coach Martin Rennie. Both men came over to Carolina after two years with Cleveland prior to the 2009 season.

“I hardly ever saw him play a bad game,” Rennie said. “He is consistently a very good player you can always rely on. We’ll definitely miss having him, but we wish him all the best and we’re excited about what he’s going on to do.”

In his only season with the RailHawks, Tolleson missed the first six games of the year but played all but 38 minutes the rest of the year.

The Carolina defense allowed a 0.63 goals against average and posted 17 shutouts last year.

All year long, the Tri-Nine has been establishing itself as one of the state's top conferences.

Now, that dominance has been rewarded. Four teams got into this year's dual-team wrestling playoffs. The Tri-Nine gobbled both of the East region's wild card spots as Green Hope (26-6) and Holly Springs (21-6) each earned bids.

Green Hope will face Cary (30-0) in the first round and the two teams are in the same pod as New Bern and Northern Durham.

Holly Springs will face PAC-Six champ Southern Durham and is in the same pod as Southern Pines Pinecrest and Greenville's J.H. Rose.

Panther Creek (24-1) will face Greater Neuse champ West Johnston in the first round and be in the same pod as Leesville Road and Fayetteville's Jack Britt.

The four-team pods will wrestle on Tuesday, with one team emerging to play on Thursday in the East regional semifinals and finals. The one team that comes from that foursome will play for the state title.

Apex and Green Hope boys and girls basketball teams faced off on Friday, and in each case an outright Tri-Nine regular season conference championship was decided.

The Apex boys won 71-60 over Green Hope to lock up first place. The Cougars improved to 13-1 in conference play, losing to only Panther Creek by one.

Green Hope’s girls team won 85-45 to keep its perfect record 22-0 intact. The Falcons are 15-0 in Tri-Nine play entering Tuesday’s game against Holly Springs.

The Tri-Nine wrestling tournament is today. Finals are expected to start around 3 p.m. at Cary High School.

For those who want to watch the final matches and can't make it to the event, the video will be posted on Cary's ihigh.com Web site.

Here's the list of all athletes in our area who either signed or were expected to sign with colleges to play next season:

The snowy weather and subsequent icy roads that took over our area on Friday, Jan. 29 caused a major headache for local high school athletic directors as they try to reschedule those games — including big conference match-ups — for a later time.

Wake County schools were canceled on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. When there's no school, there's not athletic events — that's the rule.

Here's a list of events that were canceled but have since been rescheduled. Keep coming back to this blog to find out more rescheduled events as they come in:

• Apex and Holly Springs boys and girls basketball teams were scheduled to meet on Tuesday. Those games will be played Thursday.
• In order to play that game on Thursday, Holly Springs had to cancel its out-of-conference games scheduled for that day with Southeast Raleigh
• Cary and Panther Creek were set to face each other in wrestling on Wednesday. That will no longer be the case, but since P.C. has no game scheduled for its gym on Thursday, the match will likely slide over to Thursday.
• The basketball teams at Athens Drive may have to cancel an out-of-conference match-up for next week with Wake Forest-Rolesville. The Jags still have four conference games left and cannot play more than three games in a week.
• Lee County and Middle Creek didn't push their Jan. 29 game up a day, and it was rescheduled for Wednesday. Now it'll have to be made up again.
• Still waiting for word on other games including: Holly Springs/Athens Drive wrestling, Fuquay-Varina/Panther Creek basketball, Cary/Middle Creek basketball.
• According to the Holly Springs wrestling Web site, the schools are trying to schedule the Athens/Holly Springs match for Thursday at 4:30 at the HSHS auxillary gym. No junior varsity wrestling. Athens has open house that day, so that could complicate matters.
• Green Hope will play Fuquay-Varina in basketball on Thursday. The boys game is at Fuquay while the girls is at Green Hope.
• Apex has cancelled JV boys basketball and JV wrestling with Holly Springs and Middle Creek, respectively. Instead, the varsity wrestling match with Middle Creek will start at 5:45 and the Apex/Holly Springs varsity boys match will start as close to immediately afterwards as possible.
• Fuquay-Varina/Lee County wrestling will take place on Thursday in the school's auxiliary gym at 7. Fuquay's girls basketball games against GH will go on in the main gym.
• Cary Christian will play its basketball games (varsity & JV, boys & girls) against Arendell-Parrott Academy on Monday, Feb. 8. The games start at 3:15.
• Cary/Panther Creek wrestling match will be on Thursday at the same time it was schedule for Wednesday — 7 p.m. 
• Panther Creek/Fuquay-Varina basketball games are rescheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 10.
• Cary/Middle Creek basketball games from Tuesday has been moved to Wednesday, Feb. 10
• Lee/Middle Creek basketball games moved to this Saturday. Varsity boys at 4 p.m., no word on girls.

The girls' side of things isn't nearly as up-in-the-air like the boys.
In fact, the five playoff spots for the Tri-Nine are all but sealed.
However, that didn't stop our SWakeSports rankings from moving around a
few teams after last week's games.

Just two weeks left in the basketball regular season. TheSWakeSports blog has already addressed the playoff implications as they stand
with the year winding down. But first, let's get to our snow-delayed
weekly boys basketball rankings. Once again, Apex is in the top spot,
and we had some swapping of teams at 4-5 and 9-10 this week.