2018 Season Preview: #21 MIT Engineers

Happy December, boys and girls! We hope you’ve been enjoying the first week of what will be far too many season previews. Throughout the next few months of winter, we will be posting at least three and sometimes up to six season previews per week. So far you’ve already gotten in-depth looks at #18 Johns Hopkins and the entire Heartland Conferenceand now it’s my turn to put a patented D3NE spin on the action. Fans of The Blog have been calling me D3NESCAC for years now, and while the majority of my teams do happen to play in that vaunted conference, one that doesn’t is the MIT Engineers. Full of talent both on the court and off, MIT has struggled ripening said talent and, forgive me for mixing food metaphors, still remain quite raw. After losing a few top players in previous years such as Edwin Zhang and Kevin Wang, this year the Engineers lose a bit of depth instead. Another year of development for all their top players, combined with another great recruiting class makes MIT a potential sleeper to cause some real chaos in the Northeast region. I know I know, there have been whispers of “this is MIT’s year” for multiple years now, but the Engineers have always been a divisive team when it comes to the bloggers. Some believe they will never ascend to the level of which we know they remain capable, while one blogger actually predicted a top-10 finish for the Cambridge Crew last year. However, the idea that there aren’t reasons for optimism out the Red Line is imperceptive and bordering on obstinate at this point. With its third-straight top-10 recruiting class in DIII, and likely no starting seniors, the MIT arrow will continue to point decidedly upward over the next two years. It will likely take a season’s worth of proof to convince the haters, but as D3RegAS pointed out last year with his fantasy team name, Sean Ko enjoys The Process.

Location: Cambridge, MA

Conference: NEWMAC

Coach: Dave Hagymas, 13th year as MIT Head Coach

ITA National Ranking (as of end of 2017 season): 21st

ITA Regional Ranking (as of end of 2017 season): 9th

Blog Power Ranking: 19th

Twitter Handle: @MITTennis. Bad for in-match updates, good for post-match scores, especially when they’re hosting.

Key Losses: Kenny Gea (#6 singles), Bryan Lilley (#1 doubles), Avi Walden.

Key Additions: Charles Deng (UTR: 12.11, 5-star from California), Michael Zhao (UTR: 11.93, 4-star from New Jersey), Pablo Ampudia (UTR: 11.25, 3-star from Texas).

Realistic Best Case Scenario: The juniors hit their stride and Barr/Cauneac/Ko become one of the top trios in the country. Either Deng/Zhao steps up and plays some good #5. The competition for #6 pushes one of the players with a bit more experience (La Soya or Go) to improve and they become a rock at the bottom of the lineup. MIT sweeps its conference, but also beats Bates, Tufts and Brandeis. They take a couple points off Midd, and push Amherst to a close loss, before not dropping at match at NEWMACs. MIT enters NCAAs as a dangerous #2 seed ranked in the top-15 in the country. 
Realistic Worst Case Scenario: The juniors continue what was an underwhelming fall. We see little development from either Cheng or Go, and the freshmen are forced to play heavy lineup minutes. MIT loses a close match at Bates, gets beaten by Tufts, smoked by Midd and Amherst, and then loses another close match against Brandeis. The Engineers still run through NEWMACs, continuing their seemingly endless streak of conference titles, but earn the #2 seed in the top NESCAC team’s region and lose 5-0 in the Sweet 16.
POSITIVE BOLD PREDICTION: MIT will win two of its three closest matches, against Bates, Tufts and Brandeis this year, something it has only done once since 2013.
NEGATIVE BOLD PREDICTION: No MIT player will make the individual portion of NCAAs this year. Although Big Barr made it last year, ending a streak of no MIT players at NCAAs, I’m afraid MIT will be left out again. Then again, Tyler has trended up throughout his entire career so far, hopefully he proves me wrong!

Lineup Prediction

He’s Big Barr, he’s iron tough

#1: Tyler Barr, junior, UTR=12.26, range: #1-2. Coming off a very good sophomore campaign, Tyler looks to again be the top dog in this MIT lineup. While his fall was not his best work, he took losses to freshmen from Colby (projected top-3 player) and Midd (projected non-starter), I think Big Barr will be just fine in the spring. He lost in the 2nd round of the ITA last fall too, and somehow powered through to still have an ok spring, if you consider qualifying for NCAAs in the deepest region in the country, winning a round at NCAAs, and becoming an All-American to be “ok.” Even though he’s not in the NESCAC, Barr will get plenty of chances to prove himself this year with matchups against DeMendiola (likely twice), Cuba, Rosen, and whoever plays #1 for Tufts and Amherst (Gupte and Wei?) I just said that I’m afraid Tyler misses out on back-to-back NCAA bids, but he’ll certainly have the opportunity to play his way in!

#2: Alex Cauneac, junior, UTR=11.77, range: #1-3. If you’re worried about Barr after his fall, then you should be in hysterics about Cauneac at this point. The second of MIT’s junior triumvirate, Cauneac was 0-2 this fall, losing both his 1st round match and his consolation match at the MIT tournament, after missing ITAs. However, one bad weekend shouldn’t make people flip out. Here’s a hot take, people have bad days, especially when they’re only playing for themselves and not their team. Alex will also likely man the top doubles spot, albeit with a new partner this year after the early graduation of Bryan Lilley. Watch for Cauneac and Barr to gel this year and really be a doubles force as seniors.

The Process

#3: Sean Ko, junior, UTR=11.76, range: #2-5. Ko posted a solid win at the MIT tournament this fall, and pushed Jayson Fung (projected Amherst #1-4) to a super breaker in the following round. He also won a few rounds at the ITA, before falling to Will de Quant (projected Midd #2-3) in the Sweet-16. A nice fall for Ko, mixed with a very good 2016-2017 season where he notched wins over some really good #4’s like Jerry Jiang (Bowdoin), Tyler Ng (Brandeis), and even beat Rohan Gupte (projected Tufts #1), leads me to believe he’s continuing to improve and should be a tough out in the middle of this MIT lineup.

#4: Victor Cheng, sophomore, UTR=11.98, range: #2-5. Yet another MIT player who came into the fall with big expectations and suffered a bit under their weight. As a freshman, Cheng had great wins over Samson (Wesleyan) and Fung (Amherst) at the #3 spot. However, this fall he lost to Hillis (projected Amherst #3-6), Schlanger (projected Midd #3-4), and Patel (projected Bowdoin #6-7), in his three toughest matchups. Cheng did pair with Go to win a couple rounds of doubles at the MIT Tournament, but the real tragedy here is that he was no longer playing with freshman Charles Deng. The naming pair and rhyming possibility of Cheng and Deng is almost too good to pass up. Get it together, Coach Hagymas.

#5: Charles Deng, freshman, UTR=12.11, range: #2-6. Speaking of Cheng and Deng, Charles was one of the few bright spots of MIT’s fall. He took down fellow freshmen Luis Cuervo (projected Bowdoin #7) and Boris Sorkin (projected Tufts #3-5), before knocking off senior Sachin Raghavan (Williams projected #2-4) and making the quarterfinals of the MIT Tournament. We didn’t see Deng at ITAs, so this was his only singles action of the fall. Deng will be MIT’s second 5-star in the starting lineup this year (along with Ko), and if he plays like he did in the fall then he has room to move up in the lineup.

#6: Michael Zhao, freshman, UTR=11.93, range: #5-7. Zhao lost to fellow freshman Noah Reich (projected Williams #7), at MIT before winning a couple of back draw matches including one against Ben Battle (Tufts projected #4-6), and an encouraging loss to Alex Vanezis (projected Midd #5-7) where young Zhao dropped both the 2nd set breaker and the superbreaker. Barr and Zhao also made the quarters of the ITA doubles draw, a nice result for a program that typically struggles with doubles. I don’t know if Zhao will be the starter at the beginning of the season, but if he continues to improve my guess is that he will be there by the end.

Go, Albert Go, go.

Also in the mix: Albert Go (sophomore, UTR=11.29) & Henry La Soya (junior, UTR=11.38). Both guys have the experience edge over young players like Deng and Zhao, with Go having a full year of #5 singles under his belt, and La Soya playing some in both lineups. Go might be the most likely candidate to start the year as the singles anchor. He took a couple of L’s at the MIT Tournament, but did manage to pick up some doubles wins in the back draw (playing with Cheng). Albert had a solid year at #5 last year, mainly beating guys he was favored against and losing to ranked teams. His best win of the year probably came over Stephen Baxter from RPI. La Soya also saw some playing time last spring, and fared very well against NEWMAC competition in both singles and doubles.

Schedule Analysis

As always, MIT has a schedule full of conference foes and more interesting non-conference regional matchups. The Engineers have won the NEWMAC for approximately 3,491 consecutive years, and they shouldn’t have any real trouble making it 3,492. They start the year, as they have done throughout the past few years, with a couple of non DIII teams in Boston University and Bentley University, neither of which is more than a 30 minute trip for our heroes. Then, after a few weeks of indoor training, the going gets tough for MIT, as they host both Tufts and Middlebury and then travel to Bates all within the span of 12 days. The majority of MIT’s ranking will be decided by the matches with Tufts and Bates, both of whom MIT has a real chance of beating. Both opponents are notoriously difficult to beat on their home courts, but getting Tufts at home and going to Bates is probably a better scenario for the Engineers, as Tufts appears to be the stronger of the two middling NESCAC teams.

April brings more conference matches, including an early matchup with likely NEWMAC No. 2 Babson on April 4. The only non-conference matches MIT will play in April are matches at Amherst and at Brandeis. While we don’t really know what to make of Amherst at this point, MIT will still be a significant underdog in that matchup. The Brandeis match should be a great measuring stick for both teams, especially given it’s late-season timing. We should know which is more likely, MIT challenging a #2 or even low #1 seed at NCAAs, or Brandeis challenging for a top-5 spot at UAAs. Neither is very likely, both are certainly within the realm of possibility.

MIT then will roll through the NEWMAC tournament as it does every year, and should coast into NCAAs as a #2 seed in a highly rated NE region (very likely one of the top-3 finishers in the NESCAC). MIT has performed well in their Sweet-16 matchups the past few years, but have ultimately fallen victim to a hungrier Polar Bear squad. In fact, Bowdoin has beaten MIT four straight years at NCAAs, and while MIT has pushed them at times, nobody would be surprised if we saw both that same matchup and that same result in May of 2018. It may seem like a cop-out, and believe me I wanted to start off with a bold prediction about MIT’s season, but my prediction for MIT is…well…predictable. Three close matches against Tufts, Bates and Brandeis, running through the NEWMAC tournament, earning the #2 seed in the Bowdoin regional, and falling to the Polar Bears for the fifth time in five years. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Sean Ko may like the process, but that process, and they hype associated with it, is undoubtedly beginning to drive MIT fans towards insanity.