The New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association’s winter season wraps up today up north in Plymouth.

Then, we all get ready for what will be one of the biggest sports weeks of season.

The hockey season was supposed to end Saturday with four games at SNHU Arena but the latest lousy weather day hd the NHIAA smartly moving the Division III boys hockey final between Belmont-Gilford and Berlin-Gorham to Sunday, and taking it out of Manchester and placing it at Plymouth State University’s Hanaway Rink. No sense in having those teams drive all the way south. It was such a lovely ride north Wednesday night in the “coating to an inch” we were supposed to have.

But this week, a break from the high schools gets underway in earnest today with Selection Sunday for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Then there will be the First Four, and on Thursday the first full round begins. And it will seem like a return to normalcy after last year’s bubble and the outright cancellation of the event two years ago due to the pandemic.

And of course, you toss in the gambling aspect that has become so huge in the last year or two, the TV ratings will go through the roof and the balls will be bouncing in our brains. It’s almost like system overload that by the time Final Four Weekend comes around on April 2, it’s almost anticlimactic.

But thanks to the just concluded MLB lockout, March Madness won’t have to share time with baseball. The national championship will be decided before the Red Sox and Yankees meet on Opening Day Thursday, April 7.

Yet the start of the tournament will coincide with what should be a free agent frenzy in two sports: baseball and the NFL. That’s never happened before, but there should be multiple MLB signings this week, many on the high end. Your Red Sox likely won’t be involved in the big ticket items and predictably lost a not-so-valued member of the pitching staff in lefty starter Martin Perez.

But we’ll wait and see where some of the other top players show up. It was surprisingly slow the first 24 hours after the locks were removed, but there were some trades Saturday (See Mets with A’s) — trades in March? — and should be much more going on in the next few days. Baseball sorely needs this.

As for the NFL, we’ll get more into that in the next day or so, but while the news will come fast and furious, it likely won’t involve the New England Patriots. Not after last year’s big splash.

But Twitter Tots will be refreshing, refreshing, refreshing over the next couple of days, and the NCAA brackets will also be broken down in earnest tonight and the office pools will be underway.

Meanwhile, it was a predictable end somewhat to the high school hockey season as the traditional powers Concord (Division I boys), St. Thomas (Division II boys) and familiar foe Hanover (Division I girls) coming away with championships (see story). And we think Berlin-Gorham comes out on top today.

So no surprises. But we’re hoping for a lot of surprises in three sports in the coming week.

March Mania.

tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.