The Lake Forest College men's lacrosse team successfully defended its home field Saturday, defeating the University of Dubuque 11-4 in the Midwest Lacrosse Tournament Final.

Along with the tournament title, the second in a row for the Foresters, comes the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament, which begins next Wednesday. That tournament bracket will be revealed Sunday night at 8:00 on NCAA.com.

While Saturday's game ended well for the home team, it did not start out that way with the Spartans winning the first two face-offs and scoring twice in the first 100 seconds of the contest.

The score remained 2-0 until a pair of freshman produced the Foresters' first goal with a man-up and 6:36 to play in the opening period. It was the 33rd score of the season for Macklin Thomas and the 28th assist for Carson Pagel.

Pagel scored his 21st of the season at the 3:09 mark to tie the score, which was still 2-2 at the end of the first quarter.

Lake Forest took control of the game in the second. Sophomore Brant Schuckman, who assisted on Pagel's goal, scored for the 16th time this year at the 9:33 mark, back-to-back tallies from junior John Casey extended the lead, and fellow junior Conor Murphy closed out the first half scoring with his third of 2024.

Dubuque scored first in the second half as well but junior Parker Hevers responded with his 13th of the season to restore Lake Forest's four-goal advantage. Junior Chas Dean netted 14th and the home team was ahead 8-3 going into the final quarter.

The Spartans scored the first goal of a period for third tim on the day but two more scores from Casey, who was named the MLC Tournament MVP raised his season total to 19 and gave the Foresters a 10-4 lead with 8:43 to play. The second of the day and 34th of the year for Thomas at the 5:23 mark was the final score of the contest.

Murphy, who was named MLC Co-Defensive Player of the Year on Friday, led all players in the game with eight ground balls and four caused turnovers. The Foresters had a 33-17 advantage in ground balls and committed just 13 turnovers to the Spartans' 20.

Lake Forest junior goalie Andrew Widlar stopped eight of Dubuque's 12 shots on goal in the game, raising his save percentage on the season to .569 and lowering his goals against average to 7.08.

The Foresters are now 15-2 while Dubuque's final record of 2024 in 10-7.