Freshman guard Sean Espinosa finished with 13 points and a game-high five assists and five steals Tuesday evening in the Lake Forest College men's basketball team's 71-47 win over visiting Beloit College.
Espinosa now has 108 assists this season, the fifth-highest mark in program history. Second place in team annals is just six assists away and he is 32 shy of the record set by Patrick Hanley in 2009-10.
Sophomore guard Aram Arslanian led the Foresters with 18 points and senior guard Eric Porter was next with 14. Porter was 4-for-9 from beyond the arc and now has 203 three-pointers in his Lake Forest career, 30 shy of the school record in that category.
The home team shot 46.6 percent from the field while limiting Beloit to just 36.2. Junior forward Danny Sotos led the Foresters with nine boards as they out-rebounded their guests 34-31. After committing at least 10 turnovers in each of its first 17 games of the season Lake Forest has kept that number in single digits each of the last three contests, including Tuesday's total of seven. The Buccaneers gave the ball away 18 times on the evening.
Lake Forest scored the game's first 13 points, led by as many as 22 in the first half, and took a 36-16 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
Beloit closed to within 13 points mid-way through the second half but got no closer. An 11-1 Forester run later in the period increased the margin to 24 and it was there again at game's end.
Lake Forest is now 14-6 overall and tied with three other teams atop the Midwest Conference standings at 10-3 in league play. Beloit fell to 2-18 overall and 1-12 in the conference.
The Foresters will host Ripon College, one of the other teams in the first-place tie, Saturday afternoon at 1:00.