The key to success in the early rounds of the Glimm is a balancing act: You need to pick enough upsets to cash in on the bonus points, but not go so upset-crazy that you miss a bunch of wins by heavy favorites.
This year, nobody pulled off that act as well as Paul Mordarski. In his Mordyusa1 bracket, Mordarski correctly picked upsets by New Mexico State, Iowa State, Miami and Michigan. But he also had the highest pick % in the Glimm, nailing 87% of all picks.That combination put Mordarski in first place after the first round of the NCAA tournament, with 39.5 points. He’s one ahead of Curtis Benham’s Sparty bracket, and Joey Barnard’s self-named bracket.
In the women’s pool, Max Rosenberg correctly picked two big upsets – Florida Gulf Coast over Virgina Tech and South Dakota over Ole Miss – to finish Day 1 in first place, with 20 points. Mike Lazarus, Pete Catapano and Lauren Kimball all trail by just a half-point.
Full men’s standings are here, and full women’s standings are here.
As the games resume, take some time to look over the standings and marvel and some of the creative entry names. That’s what longtime Glimmer Zeph Varley did yesterday.
“I love reading the crazy names of other brackets,” Zeph said. “You should do interviews with a few contestants to get back stories on the bracket titles. It’d be worth a chuckle.”
And Zeph is right. So if you are particularly proud of your bracket name, or there’s a good story behind it, please share it with me. I may reach out with some questions, and will aim to highlight some of those stories in upcoming updates.
Two more notes: 1) If you haven’t submitted your Glimm dues yet, please do so ASAP ($5 per bracket). You can vemno me at @Josh-Kleinbaum. 2) You may notice a lag in updates to the standings tonight/tomorrow morning. That’s because, along with a few other longtime Glimmers, I’ll be running in the NYC Half Marathon tomorrow morning. So late games tonight likely won’t be updated until mid-day tomorrow. But wish me, Jon Schwartz, Jeff Eldridge and anyone else running good luck!