It’s the third Sunday in March, which means one thing: The Glimm is back! For the 32nd year, the Glimm brings you the best NCAA tournament pool in the land.

Like last year, we’re going to have pools for both the men’s and the women’s tournaments. They work pretty much the same way (although the women’s Glimm won’t have all of the special awards of the men’s Glimm – the Orlov, the Glimm scholarship, etc. The women’s pool will have to build its own traditions over the years): $5 to enter, upset points, 70/20/10 split, last-place gets $5 back.

The men’s pool is live now, so you can fill out your brackets. The women’s pool will go live tomorrow. 

WHAT: The 32nd Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament Pool

HOW: Fill out a men’s bracket here, and/or a women’s bracket here starting tomorrow evening, then send me $5 per bracket via venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum). IMPORTANT: When sending money, be sure to specify what bracket (entry name and men’s or women’s pool) you’re paying for. I’m also requesting your Venmo handle, so if you don’t pay by the end of the first weekend, I can send you a request.

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

THE PAYOUT: In both pools, the winner gets 70% of the pot, runner-up 20% and third-place person 10%.  To give some context, the winner has taken home north of $1K in some years. There are a few other prizes in the men’s pool, 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: For both pools, 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: Any kid under Bar Mitzvah age that enters the Glimm men’s pool (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. We’ll see how many kids enter to determine if there will be a kids championship in the women’s pool…

HOW TO PAY: Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum). IMPORTANT: When sending money, be sure to specify which brackets in which pool you’re paying for. This year, I’m asking for your venmo handle in the bracket. If I don’t receive payment by the end of the first weekend of the tourney, I will send you a Venmo request.

Caitlin Clark made history on Friday night. Thanks to the Glimm, she may have made a little money, too. 

Dan Stamm bet big on Clark and Iowa in his Glimm women’s bracket – even naming it Caitlin Clark’s NIL, perhaps an indication that he’ll donate any winnings to the Iowa star’s Name, Image and Likeness fund. 

The bet paid off. Clark scored 41 points on Friday night, the most ever in a women’s semi final, to propel Iowa past previously unbeaten South Carolina and to propel Caitlin Clark’s NIL atop the Glimm standings.

And while Clark and Iowa still have the championship game to play, against LSU, that will not matter for the Glimm: Stamm has clinched the title. He can add to his 120 points if Iowa wins, but he cannot be caught even if Iowa loses.

In fact, everything is now settled in the women’s pool: Francesca Catalano’s Walter White clinched second (119.5), and Paul Mordarski’s Mordyusa1 clinched third (113). Nicole Kleinbaum’s yamama bracket finished dead last, and Nicole will receive the pity money.

The men’s pool resumes tonight with the Final Four. Visit theglimm.com for full men’s and women’s standings. 

Of course, Brandon Miller’s Alibi is leading the Glimm.

Brandon Miller’s alibi — that he was just driving to his teammate, not accessorizing a murder, and it was just coincidence that the teammate’s gun was in the back seat of his car and that the teammate immediately used that gun to kill someone — is the reason Alabama is the #1 team in the country, and one of two #1 seeds still standing after the first week of the men’s NCAA tournament. 

In Alabama, delivering the murder weapon to the scene of the crime, apparently, isn’t a crime. As his coach said, Brandon Miller is a good guy who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So Miller, the best player on the country’s best team, did not miss a game. The team earned a top seed in the tournament, won its first two games, and is poised to challenge for an NCAA title.

Arun Gopal is unfazed. He not only is willing to ride the Tide to the top of Glimm’s standings, but he also named his bracket Brandon Miller’s Alibi. And after 48 games, that bracket is in first place in the Glimm.

Gopal picked 75% of the games right in the tourney’s first two rounds, and his 63.5 points leads Mike Kotowski’s eponymously named bracket by 3.5 points. Justin Guenley’s KU back to back bracket sits in third (58.5), followed by Jason Eckerling’s The wrath of Kwarta’s toilet after mexican (57) and Lauren Kimball’s LK1 (55.5).

Penny Otter’s ITS PEN PEN bracket has fallen to seventh, but the 9-year-old still leads the  Glimm Kids Championship race, ahead of Grace Kern by one point.  

In the women’s pool, Francesca Catalano nearly pulled off a historic feat with her Walter White bracket. Catalano picked 15 of the Sweet 16 correctly – her only miss coming in Duke’s overtime loss to Colorado. 

That near-perfect round gives her 70 points and a commanding lead over second-place Jason Kaden’s Jiffo4 (62.5).  Jeff Keating’s jkedit (62), Adam Kleinbaum’s ThrowingDarts (59) and Michael Rosenberg’s Michael Rosenberg (57.5) round out the top five. 

In all, Catalano has picked 87.5% of the women’s games correctly. 

The men’s tournament resumes on Thursday, and the women’s tournament resumes Friday. In the meantime, men’s standings are here, kids championship standings are here, and women’s standings are here.

The first round of the NCAA tournament never disappoints. Unless, of course, you’re one of the 18 Glimmers who picked Purdue to win the whole thing.

For the third straight year, a highly seeded Purdue team was knocked out by a double-digit seed – this time, the Boilermakers became the second #1 seed ever to lose in the first round.

For Mike Kotowski, it was a devastating blow. Kotowski sat near the top of the standings for most of the first day of the tournament. But he picked Purdue as his champion, and his hopes at victory are now slim – by the end of the first round, he fell all the way to 14th place.

In all, 38 Glimmers have already lost their champion – most of them having picked Purdue or Arizona (who lost to Princeton).

Benefitting from the chaos?  Jason Eckerling and Penelope Otter. Eckerling’s The wrath of Kwarta’s toilet after Mexican bracket and Otter’s ITS PEN PEN bracket are tied for first after the first round, with 38.5 points. Eckerling picked 25 of 32 games right, including Princeton’s win over Arizona. Otter only picked 22 of 32 games right, but she nailed many upsets, including Fairleigh Dickinson’s historic win over Purdue. 

Gray Tjoe (Baby Tjoe), Chris Kern, Ramona Shelburne (Dragonfly), Jim Iovino (Trust the Process) and Arun Gopal (Brandon Miller’s Alibi) round out the top five (including a three-way tie for fifth). 

In the women’s pool, Zeph Varley’s ZXVW bracket held a slim lead over Dan Stamm (Clark is Iowa) and Adam Kleinbaum (ThrowingDarts) after one day of play. Jason Kaden’s Jiffo4 bracket is in fourth, and Jeff Keating (jkedit1), Pete Catapano (PeteCatWomenOne) and Francesca Catalano (Walter White) are tied for fifth.

Full men’s standings are here, and full women’s standings are here. 

The men’s second round kicks off at 12:10pm ET today, and the women’s first round resumes at 11:30am ET today.

For more than 30 years, the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool has been your home for March Madness, bringing you the best pool in the land. And this year is no different! Well, it’s a little different: For the first time since 2015, Michigan is not in the men’s field (boo!). That means all of us Michigan people won’t be picking with our hearts – maybe it’ll help our brackets!

Like last year, we’re going to have pools for both the men’s and the women’s tournaments. They work pretty much the same way (although the women’s Glimm won’t have all of the special awards of the men’s Glimm – the Orlov, the Glimm scholarship, etc). The women’s pool will have to build its own traditions over the years): $5 to enter, upset points, 70/20/10 split, last-place gets $5 back.

WHAT: The 31st Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament Pool

HOW: Fill out a men’s bracket here, and/or a women’s bracket here, then send me $5 per bracket via venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum). The deadline is noon on Thursday for the men’s tournament, and noon on Friday for the women’s tournament. IMPORTANT: When sending money, be sure to specify which brackets in which pool you’re paying for.

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

THE PAYOUT: In both pools, the winner gets 70% of the pot, runner-up 20% and third-place person 10%.  To give some context, the winner has taken home north of $1K in some years. There are a few other prizes in the men’s pool, 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: For both pools, 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: Any kid under Bar Mitzvah age that enters the Glimm men’s pool (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. We’ll see how many kids enter to determine if there will be a kids championship in the women’s pool…

HOW TO PAY: Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum). IMPORTANT: When sending money, be sure to specify which brackets in which pool you’re paying for. This year, I’m asking for your venmo handle in the bracket. If I don’t receive payment by the end of the first weekend of the tourney, I will send you a Venmo request.

A year ago, when we should have been watching the NCAA tournament to see who would win the Glimm 2020 Memorial Pool, most of us were instead stuck at home, locked down at the start of the pandemic.

Not Shannon Ceglinsky. Ceglinsky, a registered nurse who works at Baylor, Scott & White Hospital in the DFW area, continued working, treating patients – including many with COVID. She got COVID herself in June, and made a successful recovery.

So when the Glimm returned in 2021, she knew what to do.

“My strategy this year?” Ciglinsky said. “Easy really: Pick my hospital’s namesake and never look back.”

When Baylor beat Gonzaga in the championship game on Monday night, the strategy paid off — and the Glimm 2021 NCAA Tournament Pool couldn’t have a more deserving champion.

Ceglinsky’s self-titled bracket finished with 132 points, a half-point ahead of Michael Hermann’s Pancakes bracket. Paul Mordarski’s Mordyusa2 finished in third with 129.5 points.

Ceglinksy’s bracket appeared to be busted early: After the first round, she was in 42nd place, and one of her Final Four teams, Texas, had already lost. In the second round, Oklahoma State, another Final Four team, fell.

But Baylor and Gonzaga kept winning. All top-three finishers picked Baylor over Gonzaga in the championship game.

Shannon is the second Ceglinsky to win the Glimm. In 2015, her then-two-year-old daughter, Sophia, won.

Seth Rubinroit wasn’t as fortunate as Ceglinsky – he put too much faith in his alma mater, USC. The Trojans made a surprising Elite Eight run, but Rubinroit picked them to win the whole tournament, and he finished in 248th place.

Luckily for Rubinroit, USC didn’t make the women’s tournament, or he likely would have made the same mistake. Instead, he titled his women’s bracket Why isn’t USC in this??, and picked Stanford to win. That worked out pretty well: Top-seeded Stanford edged Arizona in the championship game, and Rubinroit won the inaugural Women’s Glimm.

Jack Otter’s Olives2 and Lauren Kimball’s LK3 finished second and third.

In other awards:

Eli Lester pulled off a double win: Baylor’s win put his Eli bracket in 10th place overall — good enough to beat Hana Miller for the Kids Championship and to beat all of his family members to win the Glimm Scholarship.

The Orlov, awarded to the 139th place finisher, came down to the tiebreaker: Jason Eckerling’s Eck #2, Adam Gould’s Mitchapalooza and Christian Mordarski’s dowski bracket all finished with 80.5 points, tied for 137th place. To determine 139th, we had to look at who did worst in the tie-breaker — and Mordarski’s 100-point tiebreaker gets those honors.

Full standings for the men’s tournament are available here, and full standings for the women’s tournament are here.

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for Kendall Gregor that day
She picked two longshots in the Glimm, and Gonzaga stood in the way
When Ohio State died in the first, and Michigan State did the same
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast
They thought, “If only an 8-year-old can manage to win the Glimm
That proves that any of us could actually win this thing.”

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a rusty yell
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the fort
For UCLA, mighty UCLA, was advancing on the court

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout
But there is no joy in Glimmville — Kendall Gregor is now out

That’s right: With UCLA’s heartbreaking loss to Gonzaga, 8-year-old Kendall Gregor’s magic run is over. She can’t win the Glimm. She can’t even win the Kids Championship.

The Glimm is down to two: Curtis Benham’s Sparty72 (if Gonzaga wins) and Shannon Ceglinsky’s ShannonCeglinsky (if Baylor wins).

In the women’s tournament, Seth Rubinroit’s Why isn’t USC in this will win if Stanford wins, and Lauren Kimball’s LK2 wins if Arizona wins.

We’ll have a full run-down of all the winners after the championship games.

For a six-year-old, it didn’t seem like a bad bracket: Two No. 1 seeds and a No. 2 seed in the Final Four seemed like a good bet to get at least a middle-of-the-road, Orlov competitor finish. Surely not all of those teams would collapse, right?

Alas, Asa Kleinbaum put too much faith in the Big Ten in his Voty Goty Mac and Cheese bracket. Illinois and Ohio State saw early exits. Ohio, his darkhorse Final Four pick, scored an impressive first-round upset but went no further. When Asa’s other picks in general fell flat (he picked less than a quarter of the games correct overall), his hopes to climb out of the basement rested with one team: Michigan.

Asa, like many of us, saw his hopes collapse late Tuesday night, when UCLA beat Michigan. Voty Got Mac and Cheese finished with 38 points, clinching last place in the Glimm. Asa receives his Pity Prize: He gets his $5 back.

“Wait, so I get $5?” Asa said Wednesday morning after learning of his fate. “I’m the buffest!”

Asa’s misfortune (or fortune?) was Kendall Gregor’s gain. Eight-year-old Kendall’s kgregor bracket moved back into first place thanks to UCLA’s win, and continues to lead both the overall Glimm and the Kids Championship.

The Glimm is still wide open, though: With eight possible scenarios left, seven people can win outright: Kendall, Bob Connor’s Upset City, Ramona Shelburne’s Dragonfly, Doug Sweet’s Yahtzee, Brent Hopkins’ UCLATER, Curtis Benham’s Sparty72 and Shannon Ceglinsky’s Shannon Ceglinsky. Seven others have a chance to finish in the top three.

In the Kids Championship, we’re down to three contenders: Kendall, Eli Lester’s Eli and Hana Miller’s It’s March and I’m Mad.

And there’s an interesting contender for the Glimm Scholarship: Mrs. Glimm herself, Marion Glim. If Houston beats Baylor, her Grandma G bracket passes her grandson Owen and son-in-law Rich for the family lead.

In the women’s tournament, Paul Mordarski’s Mordy12 2 bracket remains in the lead, but his chances of winning are slim: He’d need Arizona to beat South Carolina in the championship game to have as hot. Otherwise, Lydia Mordarski’s lydiausa1, Lauren Kimball’s LK2 and LK4 and Seth Rubinroit’s Why isn’t USC in this? brackets are in the best shape.

Full men’s standings are here, and full women’s standings are here.