The Front Row with MARK NELKE March 31, 2011

Hey, somebody listened to me for once.

OK, maybe that's not why it happened.

I've always thought it was odd that the opening day of the major league baseball season fell on the same day the NCAA men's basketball champion was crowned.

Couldn't they start the baseball season the next day? It's not like they're in a hurry to get it over with, as the season has stretched into November in recent years.

The early games back East on opening day were over with in plenty of time to get psyched up for hoops. But the late-afternoon games conflicted with the start of the basketball game.

And it just didn't feel like opening day (or Opening Day, depending on how big a baseball fan you are), to switch over to baseball right after the national championship game, and pick up the Mariners in the middle of their season opener in Oakland.

(And no, the Sunday night baseball opener on ESPN doesn't count as opening day, sorry.)

THIS YEAR they moved up opening day in baseball, with five games kicking off the season today, a day in which there is little else in the sporting world to compete with baseball - unless you're really jazzed about that Wichita State-Alabama NIT final tonight.

The Mariners open Friday - as do the other 19 teams. Ironically, they still open at Oakland.

The season in starting four days earlier so the World Series will end earlier - in October, like it's supposed to - and hopefully avoid some of that wet and chilly late-fall weather that has been a problem in recent years.

Not that teams won't run into wet and chilly early-spring weather now with the earlier start, but at least the thought was good.

AS IT turned out, it was going to take more than home city advantage for Gonzaga to knock off Stanford the other night in the NCAA women's basketball tournament's Spokane Regional final.

The Cardinal punished Gonzaga inside, and buried enough daggers from behind the 3-point line in an 83-60 blitzing at the Spokane Arena.

Gonzaga's star point guard, Courtney Vandersloot, was her usually dazzling self, but got little help as shots that normally fell for the other Zags in other games clanked innocently off the rim against Stanford.

Hopefully Stanford will play two more games like that, and bring home a national title for the first time since 1992.

As for the Zags, Vandersloot will be gone, but the cupboard is hardly bare, and interest in GU women's basketball has never been higher. The bigger schools like Washington will come after coach Kelly Graves. But Graves sounds like he realizes what a good thing he has built in Spokane.

Graves is now getting many of the area’s top players to stay home and play for the Zags, whereas in past years they would wind up at Stanford, or Arizona State ... or Tennessee.

In recent years, the Inland Northwest has embraced the Gonzaga women like they have that other GU team over the past decade. Now is the time for the Zags to capitalize on that interest, and keep the momentum going.

Besides, if this year has proven anything, you don’t have to be one of the power schools to make a run in the NCAAs — men or women.

LOCALS IN pro baseball update: Former Coeur d’Alene High standout Shea Vucinich got a couple of at-bats with the parent Milwaukee Brewers in major league spring training games in Arizona.

Vucinich is slated to start the season with the Brewers’ long-season class A affiliate — the Brevard County Manatees of the Florida State League.

Vucinich, who left Washington State after his junior season and was drafted in the 20th round by Milwaukee last June, batted .265 in 72 games last year with the short-season class A Helena (Mont.) Brewers of the Pioneer League.

Another Coeur d’Alene High graduate, Matt Brown, who played for the Texas Rangers’ Triple-A affilliate in Oklahoma City last season, signed a minor league contract with the Minnesota Twins in December.

In 17 spring training games with the Twins before being reassigned to Minnesota’s minor league camp, he had seven hits in 23 at bats and drove in three runs.

Brown was drafted by the Angels in the 10th round in 2001, and spent his first nine seasons of his professional career in the Angels organization.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.