Category Archives: 2021

Gregor rides teams seeded higher than her age to top of Glimm

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When 8-year-old Kendall Gregor made her picks for the Glimm, they seemed a bit audacious: Two double-digit seeds in the Final Four, including one of the First Four teams?

Yet as the Glimm hits the halfway point, here we are: Kendall has picked two-thirds of the tournament’s 56 games correctly, including the unlikely Elite Eight runs by 12th seeded Oregon State and 11th seeded UCLA (even though she probably was picking the UCLA/Michigan State combo for the Spartans, UCLA’s foe in the First Four and her parents’ alma mater). That’s good enough to put her kgreger bracket in first place in both the Glimm’s main tournament and the Kids Championship as we enter the home stretch.

“I just laugh every time UCLA and Oregon State win,” said her dad, Scott, whose two brackets sit in 22nd and 130th place. “Hard to believe.”

If those two teams keep winning, Kendall could cruise to the championship. Her 88 points lead second-place Bob Connors’ Upset City bracket by 1.5 points. Jordan Brenner (jbrenner), Ramona Shelburne (dragonfly) and Jon Schwartz (Mike Smith: The Opposite Lee Bollinger) round out the top five.

With seven games remaining, only 15 still have a chance at finishing in first, with another 20 in contention for the top three. But that doesn’t mean if you’re low in the standings, you have no chance. Jordan Brenner, currently in third place? The best he can finish is second — the same as Torey Van Oot’s Kirby Knows Best bracket, currently in 186th place.

The biggest surprise? The battle for last place is still wide open – nearly unheard of this late in the tournament. The bottom eight in the standings all still have their champion alive, so there’s lots of room for movement in the basement.

In the women’s tournament, Paul Mordarski’s Mordy12 2 bracket is in first, despite losing his pick for champion, NC State. Lauren Kimball’s LK2 and LK4 brackets are tied for second place in the 23-person pool.

Full standings in the men’s pool are available here, and standings in the women’s pool are available here. Games resume tonight at 7:15pm ET.

The Glimm 2021 First Round: Bursting with Emojis

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Before the tournament started, my kids were asking questions about the Glimm, including what I did to run it. Among other things, I mentioned that I send emails throughout the tournament, and try to make them fun.

“Fun?” Stephanie asked. “Like, with lots of emojis?”

To a 9-year-old, a fun email is filled with emojis. So Stephanie, this ✉️ is for you.

Glimmer Mike Mahoney was 😂 after two late upsets on Saturday: Abeline ✝️ beat Texas 🐮 and UCLA 🐻 beat BYU put him in first place 🥇 in the Glimm. Mahoney’s MizzouTgr11 1 🐯 bracket picked just 21 of 32 first-round games correctly, but he was 🔥 with the upsets — on top of Abeline Christian and UCLA, he correctly picked upsets by ♞, 🍊, 🦆, 🟩 and 🐈.

Mahoney’s 45.5 points gave him a slim lead over Jordan Brenner’s JBrenner bracket (45 points) and Jon Schwartz’s 🎻 Mike Smith: The Opposite of Lee Bollinger bracket (43.5 points).

As for Stephanie? Her Voty Doty Dunkin Doty 🍩 bracket was in 106th place with 28.5 points, and her Kleinbaum Crew bracket was in 253rd place with 20 points. 😞

Click here for the full 🏀🗑️ standings.

And a final reminder: The women’s tournament ⛹️‍♀️ begins at Noon today ⏰, which means the inaugural Glimm Memorial Women’s NCAA Pool does, too! To enter, click here to fill out your bracket, and make sure to join the Glimm WBB 2021 group with password Alma.

The Son-in-Law takes the lead

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It started with a Linked In message.

In March 2013, Rich Lester reached out to me via Linked In with a request: He heard about an NCAA tournament pool named after his mother-in-law, and he and his kids wanted in.

Mrs. Glimm (aka Marion Glim) learned of the Glimm in 2011 from former Glimmer Greg Wilson, when he was researching the infamous Wilson Report, and shared the story with her family.

“My mother-in-law, Marion Glim has recounted the history behind the Marion Glim NCAA Tournament that you started years ago in her math class!” Rich wrote in the message. “It makes me laugh every time I think about it.”

Rich wanted to know if he and his kids — Mrs. Glimm’s grandchildren — could enter the pool.

Now, eight years later, Rich is one of a handful of relatives of Mrs. Glimm in the pool named after his mother-in-law — including Marion Glim herself. He’s the defending Glimm Scholarship winner. And a day into the 2021 tournament, he’s your Glimm leader.

In his Son-in-law-3 bracket, Rich picked 14 of 16 games correctly on Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament. He didn’t pick the day’s big upset (Oral Roberts over Ohio State), but he nailed upsets by Oregon State, Syracuse, Rutgers and North Texas. His 26.5 points give him a four-point lead over Kelly Bohling, Jay Sevilla and Bob Connors.

Will the son-in-law hold onto the lead? Games resume at 12:15 today, so we’ll find out soon enough. Full standings are here.

PLUS: The women’s tournament begins tomorrow, which means the inaugural Glimm Memorial Women’s NCAA Pool does, too! To enter, click here to fill out your bracket, and make sure to join the Glimm WBB 2021 group with password Alma.

BREAKING NEWS: The Inaugural Glimm Women’s Pool!!!

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By popular demand from the Kleinbaum children, we’re excited to announce the inaugural Glimm Memorial Women’s NCAA Tournament Pool!

This is hastily thrown together, so we’re using an ESPN group (you need to create an ESPN ID if you don’t have one already). Next year, we’ll see if we can migrate it to theglimm.com. But the gist is the same: $5 to enter for three weeks of fun, five entries max.

This is officially being run by my daughters, Joanna and Stephanie. Stephanie put together a little presentation to go with it.

The tournament starts on Sunday, so while the timeline is a little tight, there’s still plenty of time to fill out a bracket. Link to bracket below, and venmo entry fee to @Nicole-Kleinbaum.

https://fantasy.espn.com/tournament-challenge-bracket-women/2021/en/group?ex_cid=tcwomen2021_email&groupID=58055&groupp=QWxtYQ%3D%3D&inviteuser=e0M4NTA0MTEyLUQ2OUItNDZDQy1BRDc4LUUzNjVCODczRDZBMH0%3D&invitesource=email

Group: Glimm WBB 2021
Password: Alma

Let the games begin!

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Nearly two years after Mike Lazarus claimed the 2019 Glimm Championship (711 days, to be precise, but who’s counting), the Glimm is back.

Virginia Tech just tipped off against Florida, which means we’re underway. And it’s a big group: We have 278 entries competing for the 2021 title, including 23 vying for the Kids Championship and 13 relatives of Mrs. Glimm in the running for the Glimm Scholarship (including the original Mrs. Glimm).

This year, the top seeds dominated the picks: No. 1 Gonzaga was picked to win the tournament in 41% of brackets, followed by Illinois (16%), Michigan (13%) and Baylor (12). That means more than 80% of you picked a #1 seed to win the tournament. 

But there are lots of darkhorses, too – Morehead State, Colorado, UCLA and VCU were all someone’s championship pick. 

You can see the full summary of picks here, and as games unfold, standings will be updated here.

As always, theglimm.com will be your home for all things Glimm for the next three weeks. So strap in and get ready!

Glimm 2021: The Virus Edition

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About a year ago, with Selection Sunday just a few days away, the world turned upside down. Schools shut down. Work became a do-from-home thing. Way too many people got sick, and way too many people died.

The Glimm 2020 never happened, of course, but that was a footnote to the year that was.

Yet, here we are a year later, and I’ve been surprised by the number of people who texted, messaged or emailed: Will the Glimm be back?

We’re all searching for some normalcy, and the Glimm is normal. Every March since 1992, we’ve had the Glimm. We filled out a bracket, cheered for our teams, talked trash to our friends, and some lucky ones took home a little money.

So yes, the Glimm is back. This means there are three things you need to do: Wear a mask, get a vaccine if you’re eligible, and fill out your bracket.

What you need to know:

WHAT: The 29th Annual* Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament Pool

HOW: Fill out a bracket here, then send me $5 via 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, 2019 winner Mike Lazarus took home north of $1K. 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), the Kids Champion (the top finisher under Bar Mitzvah age; details below) and the Pity Finisher (the last-place finisher gets his/her $5 back). On top of that, thirty bucks comes 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. 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.

KIDS CHAMPION: We introduced this pre-COVID in 2019 (Brooklyn Rados was your 2019 Kids Champion), and it’s back in 2021: The Glimm Kids Championship. Any kid under Bar Mitzvah age that enters the Glimm (and makes their own picks – this isn’t about mommy or daddy submitting an entry under baby’s name) is also eligible to win the Kids Championship. Like the Glimm Scholarship (awarded to the top finisher related to Mrs. Glimm), the Kids Champion will receive a free entry to the next year’s Glimm. When filling out their bracket, kids should enter YES in the Kids Bracket field. 

HOW TO PAY: Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum).