The Middlebury men's tennis team concluded its fall portion of its schedule by participating in the MIT Invitational over the weekend at the duPont Tennis Courts and the J.B. Carr Tennis Bubble. A main singles draw with 64 participants as well as a doubles bracket with 32 duos were contested. After the first round of play in each bracket, consolation backdraws also took place.  

In the singles main draw, William de Quant advanced to the final with five impressive straight-set victories. He defeated Albert Go of MIT (6-3, 6-3) in the first round, and eased past Bowdoin's Luis Cuervo (7-5, 6-2) in the round of 32. He moved into the semifinals with victories over Tufts' Zain Ali (6-1, 6-3) and #6 seed Steven Chen of Wesleyan (6-1, 6-0). In the semis, he edged Amherst's Oscar Burney by set scores of 6-3, 7-6 (6), before falling in three sets to #4 seed Grant Urken of Bowdoin (6-4, 1-6, 6-1).

After falling in his first-round match, Hamid Derbani made it to the final of the backdraw bracket. Derbani fought back from a set down against Zach Cihlar of Brandeis (3-6, 6-4, 10-2), before knocking off Benjamin Lebowitz of Williams (6-1, 6-3). Derbani didn't drop a set over his next two matches, besting Tiago Eusebio of Wesleyan (6-3, 6-4) and Luke Carstens of Bowdoin (6-1, 6-3) to reach the final. He fell in the championship match to Cameron Daniels of Wesleyan by tallies of 6-2, 6-4.

Also picking up a pair of victories in the backdraw singles bracket was Kyle Schlanger by a score of 6-0, 6-0 over Williams' Rohan Shastri and 6-7 (4), 6-3, 10-7 against Amherst's Jon Heidenberg before losing in the quarterfinal round by default to Williams' Sachin Raghavan. Cole Sutton also picked up a win over MIT's Henry La Soya by tallies of 6-4, 7-5 before losing to Eusebio in the next round (7-5, 6-2).

In doubles play, the Panthers had five tandems in the main draw with four of them picking up at least one win. The duo of Derbani and Schlanger won three matches to reach the semifinal round. They defeated the Wesleyan pair of Cameron Hicks and Princeton Carter (8-4) and the Brandeis team of Cihlar and Jackson Kogan (8-4) to move into the quarterfinals.

In the quarters, Derbani and Schlanger bested the Amherst team of Josh Marchalik and Chris Paradis (8-6) before falling in the semis to the eventual champion from Wesleyan Michael Liu and Jake Roberts (8-4).

Allen Jackson and Aleksandr Samets posted a win over Ethan Bershtein and Ali from Tufts (8-3) as well as an 8-6 triumph over Amherst's Nathan Kaplan and Burney before losing by default to Lui and Roberts. The Panther team of Peter Martin and Timo van der Geest also picked up a victory against Brandeis' Tyler Ng and David Aizenberg (8-1) and an 8-5 win versus MIT's Kenny Gea and La Soya before losing in the quarterfinals to the Williams' team of Jordan Sadowsky and Shastri, 8-4.