After three rounds of the Glimm Memorial Men’s basketball pool, we have a new leader: Owen Lester, grandson of Glimm namesake Mrs. Glim, picked six of the Elite Eight correctly to move past Kate Lord’s GDTBATH 2 and into first place.
Lester’s OWL1 bracket correctly picked Illinois to knock off Houston and Tennessee to beat Iowa State, propelling him 96 points, four ahead of Lord.
Lord slipped to second place after going five for eight in the Sweet Sixteen, and Penny Kowitt PennyK2 moved up to third place (85.5 points) with a six-for-eight round. Both Lord and Kowitt have identical picks in the final seven games, with Duke over Michigan in the championship games.
Christopher Bowman (BOCH3) and Brandon Curley (Buddha2) are tied for fourth at 84.5.
But it’s at the bottom of the top 10 of the Glimm standings where things get really interesting.
Earl Camburn (Earl Camburn 2 (JB)), Jim Catapano (JimCat), Jeff Keating (jkedit1) and Adam Gould (Roid Rage) sit in a four-way tie for seventh place, with 83.5 points.
Not only are Earl, Jim, Jeff and Adam tied, but through 112 games, their picks are identical.
That’s right. 112 for 112. They all picked Texas to win the first two games then lose to Purdue. They all picked Tennessee to knock off Virginia and then lose to Iowa State (which didn’t happen). They all picked St. John’s to reach beat Kansas but lose to Duke.
This seems supsicious. In fact, it seems like a near mathematical impossibility. And this is a pool named for match teacher – we must take these things seriously! So Glimm officials turned to the most trusted source — ChatGPT – to crunch some numbers and determine just how likely this is.
This formula gives us the answer (the full math is here, for anyone interested):
Plugging in the right values for the Qs, you get this: 1.25×10−23
And in English, that means 1 in 79,736,844,641,242,890,000,000 — or 79.736 sextillion.
Incredible, right? Well, maybe not.
There is a reason this seemingly mathematical impossibility happened.
The name of Camburn’s entry gives us the clue: Earl Camburn 2 (JB).
Look at those last two letters in the parantheses: JB.
Earl Camburn, as some of you may know, is a senior director of creative services for the NBC Regional Sports Networks. He’s a really good guy who loves to talk sports.
In one of those recent discussions, he revealed a secret: For one of his brackets, Camburn said he would just use the picks of Jay Bilas, the ESPN college basketball analyst – aka JB.
The math tells us Camburn wasn’t the only one to have that idea.
The bad news for the Bilas Four: Jay’s Elite Eight wasn’t so elite. He had Michigan State, Florida and Iowa State all reaching the Elite Eight. When Michigan State and Iowa State both lost late last night, the Bilas Four dropped from third place to seventh.
Now, it appears the Bilas Four will part ways. Gould used the Bilas picks to get him to the Elite Eight, but then tweaked his Final Four and Championship picks. Earl and Jeff stuck with Bilas minus one game – Jay picked Florida to reach the Final Four, while Earl and Jeff both (wisely, it appears) abandoned the Gators and picked Illinois.
Only Catapano stuck with the Full Bilas. In Jay He Rides.
Some quick other Glimmbits:
- In the women’s pool, it’s an LA Daily News party at the top. Two-time Glimm men’s champion Ramona Shelburne got three of yesterday’s four games right to move into first place with 73.5 points. Gene Warnick (Gene W.) and Aron Miller (UCSD for the (first round) win) are tied for second with 70 points. All three are former Daily Newsers.
- In the kids brackets, Clare Kern leads the men’s pool with 82.5 points, and Asa Kleinbaum’s e^i pi +1=0 and Sydney Kwarta’s Soupy Popcorn are tied for first in the women’s pool with 66 points.
- Speaking of Asa Kleinbaum, my math-obsessed 11-year-old son, today’s Glimm update is dedicated to him. You may have noticed three entries with math formulas for names — ln(x)=sum from n=1 to infinity for -(1-x)^n /n, e^i pi +1=0 and i^i=e^(-𝞹/2) — those are Asa’s (and he only submitted the second women’s bracket because he realized he could include the pi symbol in the name).
- If you haven’t checked theglimm.com lately, I recommend you do. If you click on the ‘full stats’ options in the top menu, you’ll see lots of new reports available, including end-game scenarios, best possible scores and a What If tool.
Games continue for both the men and the women today.
The Men’s Leaderboard (full men’s standings here, full women’s standings here):
| Rank | Name | Score | Pick % | Champion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OWL1 | 96 | 80.4% | Illinois (132) |
| 2 | GDTBATH 2 | 92 | 83.9% | Duke (150) |
| 3 | PennyK2 | 85.5 | 73.2% | Duke (118) |
| 4 | BOCH3 | 84.5 | 75% | |
| 4 | Buddha 2 | 84.5 | 78.6% | Michigan (144) |
| 6 | This won’t end well | 84 | 80.4% | Illinois (135) |
| 7 | Earl Camburn 2 (JB) | 83.5 | 78.6% | Arizona (161) |
| 7 | JimCat | 83.5 | 78.6% | Arizona (148) |
| 7 | jkedit1 | 83.5 | 78.6% | Arizona (153) |
| 7 | Roid Rage | 83.5 | 78.6% | Duke (135) |