By John Gilbert

   This is the time of year when Northern Minnesota sports fans thank their lucky satellite dishes for the ability to watch cable television.

   It’s the annual time when we’re caught between the ice going out on area rinks, let alone Lake Superior, and the anticipated first sighting of green grass on a baseball field. It’s a time span that usually takes about a month in the Duluth-Superior area.

   And it also happens to be the time when the major sports of winter are reaching their climactic playoff points, just as the boys of summer — those hitting baseballs and those who might be sitting in the cockpit of race cars — begin their seasons.

   Here are just some of the highlights of the last week:

•   The NCAA basketball tournament, which commands the nickname “March Madness” even though it now doesn’t finish until almost midway through April, was more intriguing this year than in any year I can remember. I anticipated a final game between Louisville and Michigan State, with Louisville winning the big prize. But it was thoroughly enjoyable watching my picks collapse all the way through the end, when Connecticut beat a very impressive and top-ranked Florida team, while a valiant and outstanding Wisconsin outfit got to the Final Four before being beaten, barely, by a Kentucky team starting five talented freshmen. All of that made me decide Kentucky would probably win it all, but it was UConn that got the jump on the Wildcats and led all the way to the title. Along the way, we’re apparently conceding any semblance of style to play our Final Four in a gigantic football stadium. Texas Stadium in Arlington, Texas, might be the best football stadium in the world, and it drew over 80,000 fans to watch a court that was somewhere off in the distance, dwarfed by the gigantic video screen as well as the huge field itself. How can they go back to a normal basketball arena now, after that extravaganza?
•   The Minnesota Twins opened their season, with mixed reviews. Losing two out of three at Chicago and then winning two out of three in Cleveland brought the Twins home to open at Target Field just as the last glacial deposit melted away. (Remember, springtime comes to Minneapolis about a month before it reaches the Northland.) Cynics said the Twins are in for a long season; those eager to criticize the cynics took great heart from a 3-3 road trip to start the season; the overly optimistic thought winning 10-9 and 9-7 type games at the White Sox and Indians proved the Twins can be a contender — but remember that a lot of us don’t anticipate Chicago or Cleveland to be in the World Series this year. Still, it’s time to get fired up to just enjoy watching baseball after this winter that won’t end.
•   The Minnesota Wild were struggling just two weeks ago, prompting me to chastise the Twin Cities non-hockey media types who were calling for coach Mike Yeo’s scalp. Again. So when things looked bleakest, the Wild rose up for a stirring surge to secure a playoff spot behind No. 4 goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, a team defensive concept, and opportunistic scorers who are patient awaiting their chances to score and don’t need 40 shots to win a game. If you want to pick the two most likely teams to reach the Stanley Cup finals, try the St. Louis Blues against the Boston Bruins. There may be a few teams that will try to alter the course of those two, particularly in the West, where Anaheim, the Chicago Blackhawks, and others, are good enough to rock the Blues boat. That means a team like the Wild have won only half the fight by making the playoffs; next they’ll have to figure out a way to knock off one of those top teams. If you don’t want to have to play St. Louis, you’re not exactly winning the lottery by earning the right to face Anaheim instead. Or Chicago, just about the time both Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews make it back off the injury list.
•   The Grand Prix of Bahrain was run at night, on the well-designed Mideast track, so it was shown, live, at 10 a.m. Formula 1 racing is the finest breed of the auto racing genre, and I don’t say it lightly when I claim that the Bahrain race might have been the most exciting example of all that makes auto racing great. It might have been the best race ever. Louis Hamilton won, by 1 second over Nico Rosburg, his Mercedes teammate. During much of the race, Rosburg moved up and tried to pass Hamilton, and several times he pulled it off by charing up the inside going into a sweeping curve, only to have Hamilton wisely see him coming, yield the right of way, all the while setting up a counter move to-pass Rosburg and regain the lead immediately. That would have been spectacle enough, but consider the rest of the top 10 finishers: 3. Sergio Perez, Force India; 4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull; 5. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India; 6. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull;  7. Felipe Massa, Williams; 8. Valtteri Bottas, Williams; 9 Fernando Alonso, Ferrari; 10. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari. Incredibly, every time the cameras panned back into the field, we’d see teammates Perez and Hulkenberg duelling heatedly by swapping positions, and the same for Ricciardo and Vettel, Massa and Bottas, and Alonso and Raikkonen. Obviously, team rules were thrown aside and some of the most intense and heated competition was the result, with cars routinely hitting 200 miles per hour as they hurtled into the sweeping hairpin at the end of the long straight. Then the cameras would switch back to the duel for the lead, which was the highlight of a race-full of highlights.
•   And by the way,Connecticut also won the NCAA women’s title on Tuesday, whipping a strong Notre Dame team in a battle of unbeaten teams in the final. UConn ends up 40-0, and Notre Dame 37-1.