The Lake Forest men's basketball team was eliminated from the Midwest Conference Tournament on Friday night, falling in the semifinals to Monmouth College, 93-84, in Grinnell, Iowa.
 
Senior Cristian Rodriguez scored 27 points and collected seven rebounds in 35 minutes. The forward from Texas shot 8-of-15 from the field and was an extremely efficient 11-of-12 from the free-throw line – setting a new career high for made free throws in a game.
 
Guard Alex Forowycz scored 15 points, with 10 of them coming in the first half, as the senior was limited to just 24 minutes played due to second-half foul trouble.
 
Marko Visnjevac scored 15 points to go with four rebounds and a team-high four assists, while senior Luke Arington joined him in double figures with 14 points.  
 
The Foresters fell behind midway through the first half and struggled to make an impression on the Monmouth lead for most of the second half.
 
Lake Forest trailed by double digits the entire second half until Visnjevac hit a pair of free throws to trim the deficit to 83-75 with 3:04 remaining in the game.
 
The Foresters cut the Scots' lead to eight again on a deep three-pointer from Arington at the top of the arc with 41.6 seconds remaining, then a Visnjevac layup brought Lake Forest to within 89-82 with 32.9 left, but the deficit proved too steep to overcome.  
 
Lake Forest shot 42.6 percent for the game and made 8-of-26 three-point attempts. The Foresters converted 30-of-35 from the free-throw line.
 
In a game that featured four of the six players on the MWC First Team All-Conference list, it was the Foresters that got out to an early lead to start the game.
 
The sharpshooter Arington drilled an off-balance three-pointer to beat the shot clock on the Foresters' first possession of the game and Lake Forest opened up an 11-5 advantage in the game's opening four minutes.
 
Forowycz then hit a pullup jumper and followed it up with a four-point play to extend the Lake Forest lead to 17-9 with 14:20 left in the half.
 
Monmouth's offense kicked into gear after that, as the Scots made 12 of their next 13 shots on a 27-13 run over the next 8:27 to take a 36-30 lead.
 
The Scots carried that momentum and went into intermission with a 51-39 lead that they would not relinquish.
 
Monmouth will play the tournament hosts, Grinnell College, at 3 p.m. tomorrow in Midwest Conference Tournament championship.