The Lake Forest women's basketball team fought to the last second for head coach Tamlyn Tills on Wednesday night, falling to Monmouth College, 69-64.
 
Coach Tills announced earlier this season that the 2025-26 campaign, her 18^th as head coach of the Foresters, would be her final one.
 
Sophomore Ella Franck set a new career high with 19 points in just 19 minutes played off the bench, shattering her previous high of 11 points also against Monmouth earlier this year on Jan. 21, 2026.
 
Senior Jamie Springstead recorded her third double-double of the season in her final game for the Foresters, scoring 12 points and hauling in 11 rebounds.
 
Careah Baitlon scored nine points, and guard Mia deGrasse contributed a little bit of everything with eight points, six rebounds, and nine assists – marking a new career high for the junior and the highest number of assists by any Forester in a single game this season.
 
The Foresters got out to an early lead, thanks to balanced play at both ends of the court. Lake Forest used an 8-0 run in the first quarter to take a 12-7 lead on a Meghan Vasel bucket off an assist from Springstead.
 
It was the bench duo of deGrasse and Franck that provided the fireworks to end the first.
 
After the Foresters forced a Monmouth miss with less than 10 seconds left, deGrasse pushed ball up the court with speed before dishing to a waiting Franck on the right wing, who banked in the three-pointer for a buzzer-beater to give Lake Forest a 15-11 lead.
 
The Foresters would struggle to get stops in the middle quarters of the game, allowing Monmouth to shoot 51.4 percent in the second and third frames combined. The hosts would push their lead to as large as 16 midway through the third quarter.
 
Things changed for the Foresters at both ends in the fourth. Franck scored a pair of layups on a pair of dimes from deGrasse on Lake Forest's first two possessions of the fourth to cut the Monmouth lead to 57-51.
 
Lake Forest would inch ever closer, holding Monmouth to 1-for-10 shooting in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter, as the Foresters drew within one an a layup from Anika Kinnear with 4:00 remaining.
 
deGrasse would tie the game on a made free throw with 1:06 remaining, but the Scots would hit a three-pointer on the ensuing possession to retake the lead. The Foresters would come up empty on their next three possessions as the game slipped away.
 
Coach Tills finishes her tenure at Lake Forest with 171 career wins, good for second all-time in program history.