Coming off its first loss of the season last weekend to Williams, the men's swimming and diving team did not get a break in its schedule, as rival MIT came to Hamilton Pool Saturday. The Jumbos put forth a strong effort, but came up just short in a 154-144 loss to the nationally-ranked No. 15 Engineers.
The meet pitted Tufts against MIT in a head-to-head match after the two teams finished at the top of the Engineers' Dec. 1 host meet.
Just as the Engineers pulled out the narrow victory back in December, history repeated itself Saturday. The Jumbos' depth kept them in contention, but it couldn't make up for the Engineers' top finishes. MIT's win spoiled Senior Day for the Jumbos in the team's last home meet this season.
"I have had a great four years," senior tri-captain Jeff Goldberg said. "The energy was high and everyone was having a lot of fun watching each other race, and although the result was not what we hoped for, the whole process was as fun as it has ever been. Obviously, we would have liked to win, but at the end of the day you can't focus on the result, because I have had a great four years and it has been a lot of fun."
MIT was led by a trio of swimmers - sophomores Rastislav Racz and Luke Cummings and freshman Toomas Sepp each had three victories. The Engineers also took home a victory in the 400 medley relay, where the trio joined with sophomore Jeff Zhou to best the Tufts team of freshmen Matthew Glenn and David Meyer, sophomore Matthew Salzberg and junior James Longhurst.
Racz followed that with victories in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events. In both, he finished just ahead of Longhurst, including the 100-yard event by 18 hundredths of a second.
Cummings, along with Zhou, was part of the winning 200 medley relay. The sophomore delivered a key win in the 50-yard freestyle by beating junior Andrew Shields by just four hundreths of a second and also had a second-place finish in the 100 freestyle.
"I would say we were a very evenly-matched team and basically what it came down to was whoever was racing the fastest in any given race," Goldberg said. "It really was duking it out in every given race, and we had some really good races and some that weren't as strong."
A fourth swimmer with three wins for the visitors was junior Laurent Charpienter, who was a part of the 200-yard freestyle relay and scored first-place finishes in the 100- and 200-yard freestyle. Freshman Michael Dobson also proved to be a big contributor, as he set the tone early for MIT with a dominating performance in the 1,000-yard freestyle and also took the top spot ahead of Jumbo freshman Chris Vorlicek in the 500-yard freestyle.
"It seems that the team was pretty happy with how we swam on the whole," junior Ben Moskowitz said. "It just happened that our times in the races we swam well didn't come at the most opportune time. We had a lot of close races and unfortunately MIT just outraced us in a few of them."
The Jumbos saw strong performances from a number of swimmers, including Longhurst and Glenn, who delivered one of four Jumbo victories by coming in just ahead of Zhou in the 100-yard backstroke. The other victories came from Vorlicek in the 400-yard IM and sophomore Rob Matera in both the 3-meter and 1-meter diving events. Matera's efforts helped him qualify for the NCAA meet in both events, while Vorlicek swam a pool record 4:15.95 to give Tufts a chance at winning the meet in the final event.
"I think we did a really great job at the end of the meet and in the [400 IM] we had a freshman who set a pool record, which was incredible and placed us to the point where if we had gotten 1-3 in the last relay we would've won," Goldberg said. "Everyone put in a great effort in that relay, but it wasn't enough."
Tufts' best performance came in the 200-yard backstroke, where senior tri-captain Sean Sullivan led the way in a sweep of the top three spots. He was followed by sophomore Kyle Jones, who also had a second-place finish in the 1,000 free, with Glenn in third. Other than that, the Jumbos had no answer for the Engineers' top swimmers and could not utilize their depth to make up the gap created by the wide number of MIT first places.
Tufts, which fell to 4-2, will try to recover from its second straight loss next weekend, when they travel to Wheaton. The meet will also feature NESCAC foe Bates, who is just 1-6 so far this year.
"These losses don't really bring us down at all," Moskowitz said. "We know how well we are swimming and we know what we are capable of as a team."
