Dartmouth’s athletics program is among the College’s biggest selling points, bringing together students, alumni and Hanover community members for games and matches year-round. 75% of Dartmouth students are involved in sports, creating a vibrant sports culture on campus. It’s no surprise that the NCAA Division 1 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments — commonly known as “March Madness”— are followed closely by Dartmouth students during the spring term.
Spanning three weeks, March Madness offers a high-stakes, fast-paced series of matchups between the top collegiate basketball teams in the country, each fighting for the National Championship win. Teams are organized into brackets, advancing by defeating their opponents or getting eliminated from the tournaments after a loss. Viewers engage directly by filling out brackets with their own predictions of the outcome of each game.
Whether you’re a devoted basketball fan or simply filling out a bracket for fun, March Madness is an opportunity for sports fans and non-sports fans alike to connect through friendly competition. For some students, filling out a March Madness bracket has been a yearly tradition. Atul Venkatesh ’27 has been filling out brackets for the last ten to twelve years.
“When I was a lot younger, I would fill out 15 to 20 brackets with a bunch of different combinations of winners, but as of recent, [I’ve filled out] one or two brackets … this year, I'd say I followed a lot more college basketball than I have in the past,” Venkatesh said.
Molly Fried ’25 has also been filling out brackets for the past decade. This year, she filled out brackets for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, and she believes that making brackets “puts a stake” in the tournament and helps individuals become more invested in the games.
“You’re much more inclined to watch all [the] different games, and then you get drawn into the story lines and the different players,” Fried said.
For others, March Madness is a newer interest. Angel Gonzalez ’26 saw bracket-making as a fun social activity that he could participate in with others. He said he became interested in March Madness when he got to college.
Friend groups are a common environment for bracket-making and friendly competition. Jaysen Quan ’27 participated in two groups, both composed of friends at Dartmouth.
“Doing it with other people makes you more … invested in watching the games and seeing what happens,” Quan said. “When a game is happening, I want to make an effort to … watch it either with friends or just by myself.”
Gonzalez also made his bracket with Dartmouth friends, but he invited some friends from home to join in. He enjoyed having “friends from home and school … interact with each other” throughout the tournament, particularly during spring break when he was away from campus.
“When I was home, I [watched with] my friends, but then we got back to school, and… I watched with my friends here,” Gonzalez said.
In addition to friend groups, certain clubs and organizations also make brackets amongst members. For the past few years, Fried has been a “commissioner” of the March Madness bracket challenge for her sorority, Chi Delta, as well as for the women’s club basketball team. As commissioner, she is in charge of creating leagues through the NCAA website and sending updates about the tournament in the organizations’ respective GroupMe chats.
To add to the excitement surrounding March Madness, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team made it to the Ivy Madness tournament for the first time. While Gonzales believed that the Dartmouth men’s basketball team’s impressive run this year sparked some community interest in basketball, he also believed that once Dartmouth eventually lost, several students stopped paying attention to college basketball.
While the men’s basketball team’s success didn’t change the overall culture at Dartmouth surrounding March Madness, Venkatesh believed that more students were inspired to participate due to the excitement. He spent a lot of time monitoring the team, something he hasn’t done too much in the past.
“The fact that … they had a chance to go to … March Madness for the first time in like, sixty, or seventy years … was super exciting, and definitely could have been a reason why a lot more people got into [watching basketball],” Venkatesh said.
When it comes to organizing the bracket itself, there are several common strategies. Venkatesh, for instance, began his bracket-making process this year by “looking at upsets that [were] pretty probable.”
“The second thing I looked at was if a team had a history … of beating other elite teams,” Venkatesh said. “If it’s been done earlier in the season, it can be done again.”
Unfortunately for Venkatesh, major upsets were not particularly prevalent this year. In the men’s tournament, the Final Four consisted of the four number one-seeded teams — which means that they are expected to win. Similarly, in the women’s tournament, three of the Final Four teams were one-seeds and one was a two-seed. Venkatesh picked several “underdog” teams to go quite far in his bracket, including picking North Carolina and Drake — both eleventh seeds — to make it to the Sweet Sixteen.
Fried also found her bracket strategy less successful than she had hoped. She thought that her extensive knowledge of college basketball may have worked against her.
“Every year … I tend to focus way more on the details that are just not as … determinant of outcome as things like seeding or previous matchups,” Fried said.
For Quan, however, the success of the higher-seeded teams worked to his advantage. Having followed divisional tournaments before the NCAA tournament started, he had a good understanding of which teams were likely to perform well. When faced with teams that he wasn’t as familiar with, he often “picked the higher seed[ed team].” Prior to the championship game, Quan had the best bracket in one of his bracket-making groups.
“This year especially, if you just [picked] … the higher seeded teams to win, you’d actually have [a lot of matchups] correct,” Quan said.
Despite her bracket losing this year, Fried is excited to continue making March Madness brackets in the future.
“I will continue to make brackets because I really enjoy doing it [and] because I’m also a competitive person,” Fried said.
Venkatesh also plans to make brackets in future years, as he feels that the unpredictability of the tournament generates excitement.
“It’s such a good time, and [there’s a] reason why they call it March Madness. Anything can happen.”
