Throughout the 2017 Glimm Memorial NCAA Pool, Gootshot lingered near the top of the leaderboard. Round after round, Patrick Gerrity’s bracket turned in solid performances – but not quite good enough to take over first place. Until now.

It’s official: With five games remaining in the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournaemnt Pool, Diane Otter holds both first place and last place.

In her Olives bracket, Otter (nee Davis) picked six of the Elite Eight winners correctly, then nailed the first two Final Four participants to vault pest Jeremy Berg (Hodor Lives 4) into first place, including Oregon’s upset over Kansas.

If North Carolina and Florida win on Sunday, Otter will be the only Glimmer to pick the Final Four correctly. She’s picked 79.3% of games correctly, tops in The Glimm.

Berg fell all the way to fourth place, behind Joseph DeMichele (Googootz 2) and Patrick Gerrity (gootshot).

What makes Otter’s run all the more remarkable is that she submitted two brackets, and the other is awful. Her mom/olives bracket has already clinched dead last, picking just 12.3% of the games correctly.

The Otter Sandwich has become the Glimm’s best story (not counting 19th century murderers named Alma Glimm). Stay tuned to see if she can make it stand.

For years, the Glimm Memorial operated under a simple legend: The tournament was named for Alma Glimm, the late 11th grade calculus teacher of Glimm Commissioner Josh Kleinbaum. According to the legend, Glimm nearly busted Kleinbaum for gambling in school in 1995. But Josh insisted there was no money involved, so Mrs. Glimm joined the pool — then won the whole damn thing.

In 2011, though, the fable was busted: There was no ‘Alma Glimm.’ Josh’s 11th grade calculus teacher was actually Marion Glim, and she was alive and well. Investigative Reporter and longtime Glimmer Greg Wilson revealed the truth in the Wilson Report, a March 18, 2011 email to all Glimmers laying bare the scandal. Since then, Marion Glim herself has joined the pool (Grandma G), along with much of her family.

But the question remained: If the math teacher was Marion Glim, who was Alma Glimm? Today, thanks to first-time Glimmer but longtime Friend of the Glimm Jeff Eldridge, we have the answer: Alma Glimm was a 16-year-old girl from Freedom, Wisconsin, arrested in 1897 for twice poisoning the family that employed her. From the book Wisconsin Death Trip, written by Michael Lesy and unearthed by Eldridge:

Did Kleinbaum know this back in the late 1990s when he named the Glimm Memorial? Is this entire enterprise a strange tribute to a murderous 19th Century midwestern teenager, and the math teacher ruse just an elaborate cover story? Kleinbaum refused to comment.

As for Eldridge, his investigatory skills proved better than his prognostication skills. In his Friend of the Week bracket, he picked 13 of 16 games correctly, but missed both upsets, which put him at 174th place.

Five Glimmers went a perfect 16 for 16 on the opening day: Sara Frazier, Chris Kern, Francesca Catalano and two brackets from Scott Gregor (Big Puddin and The one where Duke wins).

Games resume at 12:15pm ET today, when Michigan faces off against Oklahoma State (Go Blue!). As always, standings will be updated here throughout the day.

The leaderboard (click here for full standings):

Notre Dame held off an upset attempt by Ivy upstart Princeton. Gonzaga struggled early against 16-seed South Dakota State. Northwestern is preparing for its first-ever tournament game. The madness has begun, which means The Glimm is in full swing.

And we have a record year: 263 total entries. That field includes Q-BALL and Q-Ball. We’ve got expert brackets (A Very Good Bracket, Noreen’s Awesome Picks, Uma WON) and confused brackets (Is This Football?). There’s Big, Big Puddin and bigmama.

Two games in, and 133 of you are undefeated. And one Glimmer lost a Final Four team (Eli Rosenberg, Princeton).

There’s no clear favorite in the tourney field: Villanova, Gonzaga, North Carolina and Duke were all picked to win it all by at least 30 Glimmers.

So enjoy the next three weeks. As always, theglimm.com is your home for all things Glimm – you can see your brackets and others, and check out the latest standings. Enjoy!

The Glimm was still in its infancy in 1993 (not even named the Glimm yet), when an unexpected March blizzard dumped more than a foot of snow on the New York area. Classes at Horace Greeley High School were canceled for several days — making it difficult to collect brackets from other students. On that Thursday morning, with games about to begin, I called classmates so they could dictate their picks, and the pool survived mother nature.

This year, mother nature poses no such threats. Yes, there’s a big March snowstorm, but thanks to modern technology, you can submit your Glimm brackets from the comfort of your warm home. So stop wasting time: Take advantage of this snow day by filling out your bracket.

Before the brackets were even released, Torey Van Oot made a bold statement: She declared that it was her year to win the Glimm. And Torey is at least partially right: It’s March, which means it’s time for the 26th Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Pool. But will Torey actually win? It’s up to you, faithful Glimmers, to do your best to prevent that.

That brackets now have been released, which means it’s time to enter the Glimm, the only pool named for Alma Glimm. For $5, the Glimm Memorial guarantees three weeks of entertainment. So click here to submit your bracket now!

More details on The Glimm:

WHAT: The 26th Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament

HOW: Go to http://192.168.86.52:2222 and fill out a bracket, then either give me $5 cash, or send me the money via your bank’s online payment system or venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum)

HOW MUCH: Five bucks per entry. And yes, you can enter more than once (but no more than five times, thanks to the Nevin Barich rule).

THE PAYOUT: The winner gets 70% of the pot, runner-up 20% and third-place person 10%.  To give some context, last year’s winner Kate Lord took home about $680. There are a few other prizes, too: The Orlov (whoever finishes exactly middle of the pack gets their $5 back, in cash, via snail mail), the Glimm Scholarship (the highest-finishing relative of Mrs. Glimm from the previous year gets a free entry), and the Pity Finisher (the last-place finisher gets his/her $5 back). On top of that, thirty bucks is coming out of the pot to pay for Glimm infrastructure, and I give myself 2 free entries.

SCORING: It’s a 1-2-4-8-12-16 scoring system with upset points. So that means that you get one point for picking a game correctly in the first round, two points in the second round, etc. And we use upset points – any time a lower-seeded team beats a higher-seeded team, you get half the difference between the seeds as bonus points (Note: This is a tweak from many previous years, when you got the full difference between seeds, not half). So if a 15 beats a 2, you get 6.5 bonus points. If a 9 beats an 8, you get half a point. The bottom line: It pays to take risks.

HOW TO PAY: You have 2 options: Give me cash in person, or send $5 via your bank’s online payment system or Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum).

When UNC’s Marcus Paige hit an improbable off-balance 3-pointer with five seconds left in the NCAA championship game, Kate Lord had to be torn. The shot tied the game and kept alive national title hopes for Lord’s beloved Tar Heels. But it hurt Lord’s chances of winning the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool.

Lord’s emotional roller coaster continue seconds later, when Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beater 3-pointer to win the game. The Tar Heels lost the national championship, but Lord won the Glimm.

The irony: The Glimmer who named all five of her entries for the Tar Heels benefited the most from her team’s crushing loss.

In the first days of this tournament, it seemed unlikely that Lord’s GoHeelsGo2 bracket could win the Glimm. After all, her champion, Michigan State, lost in the first round to Middle Tennessee State in one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history. But Lord thrived everywhere else: Overall, she picked 71% of the games correctly. She got 25.5 upset points, and correctly picked Villanova to reach the championship game and UNC and Oklahoma to reach the Final Four.

Lord finished with 132.5 points, ahead of Adam Rubinfeld (128.5) and Rich Lester (125), who both picked Villanova to win the national title.

And sitting in fourth place, just outside the money, is Mrs. Glim(m). The pool’s namesake made a tremendous run, but fell short when Villanova beat Oklahoma in the semi-final.

The most competitive match of the tournament was determining The Orlov, the prize that goes to the person who finishes in 103rd place, exactly in the middle of the pack. Mike Lazarus, Brent Hopkins and Darren Price all tied for 101st place with 78.5 points – which means the loser of a three-way tiebreak wins The Orlov. And it came down to a single point: Lazarus predicted 137 points in the final game, Hopkins 131 and Price 130. With 151 points actually scored in the game, Price was off by the most, so he wins The Orlov. In memory of Rick Orlov, Price will get his $5 entry fee back, via snail-mail, with a hand-written note of congratulations.

And with that, Glimm XXV is officially done. See you all next year!

UPDATE: A diligent Glimmer, Scott Gregor, noticed a mistake in the scoring: While the first three rounds were scored correctly, there was a mistake in the software for how the fourth round was scored (and subsequent rounds projected). I’ve fixed it, and updated standings/possibilities are now on the site.

What it means: Very little. The current standings are different, but the same four people who were in contention for the Glimm Championship remain in contention. Ten of the 11 people who had a shot at finishing in the money still have a shot at finishing in the money. The only difference: Jen Millman’s Chessmaster 2 bracket, who led for most of the Glimm and could have finished third if Syracuse beat Villanova in the championship game AND she won the tie-break, is officially eliminated from the money. Sorry Jen, and sorry for the confusion!

NEW updated leaderboard (and new updated standings are here):

In case you weren’t sure, let me make it clear: Kate Lord loves the Tar Heels. Her five entries into the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool were all named after her alma mater: GoHeelsGo1, GoHeelsGo2, GoHeelsGo3, TAR!, and HEELS! But when she filled out her brackets, Lord didn’t let her emotions get the best of her: She only picked UNC to win the whole thing in two of the five brackets. And those are the worst two of her five.

With just three games remaining in the Glimm, Lord’s GoHeelsGo2 bracket is in first place. But she’s in a delicate position: She must choose between the Tar Heels and the Glimm. If the Tar Heels win the championship, Kate Lord does not win the Glimm. In fact, she can only win if Syracuse or Villanova win the whole thing.

Lord is one of just four Glimmers that still have championship hopes: Kevin Benham, Mrs. Glimm and Nevin Barich are also still alive. Benham or Barich win of UNC wins the championship, and Mrs. Glimm, the pool’s namesake, will win if Oklahoma wins the title.

And what of Chessmaster 2, the Jen Millman bracket that had been leading the Glimm nearly wire-to-wire? Like many Glimmers, the Chessmaster collapsed in spectacular fashion on Saturday when both Kansas and Oregon lost. She has been eliminated from contention for the Glimm title, and is clinging to slim hopes for a third-place finish (Syracuse would have to beat Villanova in the championship game, then she’d have to win a tie-break).

One title has been decided: The Battle for Last Place. When Kansas lost, Jess Glazer clinched that indignity. She picked just 36.7% of the games correctly, to finish with 33.5, 9.5 points behind second-to-last JonesMo1. Jess gets her $5 back, and all of our pity.

The Leaderboard (full standings here):