Freshman guard Kelsey Burton led Lake Forest with 17 points as the Forester women's basketball team hosted and defeated Cornell College 77-72 Friday night.
Burton also pulled down 11 rebounds for her second straight double-double and third this season. Each time Burton has recorded a double-double, so has sophomore forward Molly Schoenlein, who finished Friday's game with 10 points and a career-high 16 rebounds and five assists.
Each of Schoenlein's assists came on three-pointers as the Foresters connected a season-high 10 times on 22 attempts from beyond the arc. The home team also had a 49-33 edge in rebounds Friday night to make up for committing 23 turnovers to the Rams' 11. Lake Forest shot 42.9 percent from the field in the contest while limiting Cornell to just 38.6 percent. The visitors matched the Foresters' points from long range but was outscored 19-8 at the free throw line.
A pair of Forester juniors, forward Hannah Hiland and guard Bridget Bilek, joined Burton and Schoenlein in double figures with 14 and 10 points, respectively. Hiland also added eight rebounds and Bilek four assists.
After falling behind 7-2 early in the game, Lake Forest outscored its guests 15-2 in a four-minute span of the first quarter and led 17-12 after 10 minutes of play. After a basket by Cornell to open the second quarter, Forester freshman point guard Jaianna Brooks started a 12-point run with a jumper and finished it with a three-pointer to give the home team a 29-14 lead. The Rams, however, outscored Lake Forest 13-4 over the final 5-plus minutes of the period and trailed by just six (35-29) at halfime.
Schoenlein assisted on a three-pointer by junior forward Hannah O'Day in the first 10 seconds of the third quarter and made a jumper of her own a couple of minutes later to push the lead back up to 11. The margin was 11 again with three minutes to play in the period but fell back down to six at 51-45 when the buzzer sounded. Hiland scored five points during a 9-0 run that gve the home team a 63-49 advantage midway through the fourth quarter. The Foresters' lead was up to 16 with 3:30 left but Cornell rattled off nine consective points in the next two minutes to make it a six-point game. A three-pointer by Burton and two free throws from Hiland took the lead back up to 11 with less than a minute left but back-to-back-to-back three-pointers by the Rams suddenly cut the margin to just two points with 19.4 seconds on the clock. Hiland knocked down two more free throws with 16 seconds to play and, after a couple of Cornell misses, Burton grabbed her 11th rebound of the night to secure the victory.
Lake Forest evened its overall record on the season at 3-3 and the Foresters improved to 2-0 in Midwest Conference play. It was the first league game of the year for Cornell, which fell to 2-3 overall.
The Foresters will host another conference game against Grinnell College Saturday afternoon at 3:00.