Less than a day after winning at Ripon College, the Forester men's basketball team prevailed 67-62 at Beloit College Saturday afternoon to extend its winning streak to 12 games. Lake Forest senior post player Travis Clark led all players in the game with 16 points and eight rebounds.
Senior forward Dayton Young was next for the visitors with nine points on a perfect 3-for-3 shooting day from both the field and free throw line. Fellow senior forward Drew Grennell was also 3-for-3 from the floor with two of those shots coming from three-point range. He and junior point guard Jeff Beck finished with eight points apiece.
Lake Forest shot just 40.7 percent from the floor while the Buccaneers connected on 51 percent of their field goal attempts, including five of 14 from beyond the arc. The Foresters also made five three-pointers but needed 16 attempts. The visitors' edge came at the free throw line, where they made 14 of 17 attempts while Beloit was just 7-for-12. The home team won the rebound battle 33-32 but committed nine turnovers to the Foresters' three, their lowest total in recorded history.
There were five lead changes in the first half, the last early in a 15-4 Forester run that gave the visitors a 31-21 lead. The margin reached 11 points before the Buccaneers scored the last five points of the period and trailed 36-30 at halftime.
The Lake Forest lead fluctuated between four and nine points until a layup with 1:16 to play pulled the home team to within two (62-60). Young then grabbed the last of the Foresters' 13 offensive rebounds of the day and made the put-back, despite being fouled. He also made the free throw to put the visitors ahead by five with 47 seconds left. The Bucs made a basket 10 seconds later to pull back to within two but a pair of free throws by Forester senior Nate Bateman with 19 seconds left helped clinch the victory.
The Foresters swept the season series with Beloit and their 12-game winning streak is the second-longest in program history and trails the record by just two. Lake Forest is now 12-1 overall and 8-0 at the half-way mark of the Midwest Conference schedule. Beloit fell to 4-8 overall and 3-5 in the league.
The Foresters will attempt to complete two more season sweeps at home next weekend when they host St. Norbert College at 7:00 Friday night and Ripon at 4:00 the following afternoon.
