By Joe Vanden Acker, Director of Athletic Media Relations
    APPLETON, Wis. -- The countdown of the Greatest Moments in Lawrence Athletics history continues as we look at Nos. 11 through 15.

No. 15 Win over Ripon delivers third straight football title
    In the storied history of Lawrence football, the Vikings have pulled off a three-peat of Midwest Conference titles once, and it took an epic win over their biggest rival to deliver that championship. The other huge factor at play was a Lawrence victory would assure the Vikings of their first berth in the NCAA Division III playoffs.
    The 1981 regular season finale took place at Ripon College's Ingalls Field on Nov. 7 with a lot on the line.
    "During the summer the team set goals for the season," Lawrence coach Ron Roberts told the media the week of the game. "One of those goals was making the playoffs." 
    Ripon built a 20-12 lead, and the Vikings were forced to punt with just six minutes left in the game. The Lawrence defense came up big with a sack of Ripon quarterback Kevin King, and Ripon's ensuing punt was returned to the Redmen's 40-yard line. Reppert ripped off a 23-yard run to the Ripon 17, and Lawrence got a big pass on the next play. Quarterback Dean Walsh escaped Ripon's pass rush and threw a strike to Jeff Ropella, who left a Ripon defender in his wake for a touchdown. Walsh then found All-American Pat Schwanke for the two-point conversion and the game was tied 20-20.
    Kraig Krueger's kickoff helped pin Ripon at its own 15-yard line on the ensuing drive. Ripon gained just five yards in three plays and punted, and Lawrence took over at its own 42-yard line with 2:42 left. 
    Lawrence moved down the field with a mix of Reppert runs and Walsh passes, including gains of 15 and 13 yards to Jack Ehren. The drive finally stalled with a fourth-and-4 at the Ripon 19-yard line with 31 seconds left. Krueger, a sophomore from Appleton and the first of three brothers to play for the Vikings, lined up for the kick and drilled the 36-yarder through the uprights for a 23-20 lead.
    "As soon as I hit it, I knew it was dead on," Krueger told the Appleton Post-Crescent.
    Ripon got the ball back for two plays, and Kurt Parker sacked King on both of them to seal the victory. 
    Reppert ran 35 times for 118 yards and a touchdown, and Walsh completed 16-of-35 passes for 216 yards and a touchdown. Ehren grabbed seven passes for 99 yards, Ropella had five catches for 53 yards and Schwanke had three catches for 62 yards. 
    Lawrence, ranked fifth in the NCAA Division III poll that week, ran its win streak to 17 games, and the Vikings got an invitation to the national playoffs for the first time in school history.
    "It's an all-time game," Roberts told Post-Crescent Sports Editor John Paustian in the bedlam after the game. "I can't remember anything like this. That was really super." 


Lawrence's Scott Reppert (35) ran 35 times for 118 yards in the 23-20 victory over Ripon in 1981.
 
No. 14 Kate Leventhal's fantastic finish 
    Kate Leventhal went where no Lawrence woman had ever gone before, and that was earning All-America honors in cross country.
    The diminutive Leventhal, who was just 5-foot-3 and 110 pounds, battled the field of elite runners at the 1981 NCAA Division III Championships and the weather to a stunning 16th-place finish. The top 25 runners received All-America honors.
    With snow on the ground on Nov. 21 and temperatures hovering in the mid-20s at Petrifying Springs Park in Kenosha, Wis., Leventhal was near the back of the field of 95 runners about 1,500 meters into the race. Leventhal began to steadily move up but was still in 40th place with less than 500 meters left to the finish. Leventhal dug deep and started picking off runners, passing Carol Karamitsos of Occidental, Tricia Hellman of Williams, Debra Cassinelli of Fitchburg State and soon more runners found themselves in Leventhal's wake. 
    By the time she crossed the finish line, Leventhal was in 16th place, edging Nebraska Wesleyan's Andrea Brousaides at the line, with a time of 19:57 over the 5,000-meter course.
    The All-America run at the NCAA Championships capped a great season for Leventhal, who was inducted into the Lawrence Hall of Fame in 1998. Leventhal posted individual wins at the Lawrence Invitational and the Lawrence Triangular and picked up a second at the Beloit Invitational and a third at the Madison Tech Invitational. Leventhal earned her spot in the national meet with a fourth place at the NCAA Midwest Regional in a time of 18:32.4.

No. 13 Lawrence becomes center of NCAA basketball universe
    In February and March of 2006 there was no brighter light in the NCAA Division III basketball world than Lawrence and Alexander Gymnasium.
    The Vikings were riding a season-long win streak, had just won their third consecutive Midwest Conference regular season title and had captured a third straight Midwest Conference Tournament crown. Lawrence entered the 2006 NCAA Division III Tournament as the undefeated No. 1 ranked team in the country. 
    Lawrence stood at 24-0 when it faced the University of St. Thomas on March 4 in front of a crazed standing-room only crowd of 1,100 inside venerable Alexander Gym. March Madness had arrived in full force.
    Lawrence grabbed a 54-40 lead on Chris Braier's layup that broke the school's career scoring record of 1,554 held by Hall of Famer Joel Dillingham. The Tommies battled back over the next five minutes and trimmed the lead to 60-59 on Sean Sweeney's 3-pointer with just 20 seconds left. Rookie guard Ryan Kroeger was fouled and he made two free throws to push Lawrence's lead back to 62-59 with 17 seconds left. Sweeney heaved up another 3-pointer, but it was off the mark. St. Thomas' Isaac Rosefelt grabbed the offensive rebound, but Kroeger stole the ball and was fouled with five seconds remaining. He made one free throw to seal the 63-59 victory.
     The second-round victory put Lawrence in the Sweet 16 for the second time in three seasons, but this time the NCAA sectional would be played inside 77-year-old Alexander Gym. It was a tough ticket and the Lawrence allotment was sold out in 45 minutes. Fans who couldn't get tickets watched on closed circuit in the Green Room, Lawrence's wrestling arena, one level below the gym. 
    "I'm obviously pretty biased, but our kids have done everything they were supposed to do, and they deserve to be here," Lawrence coach John Tharp told Dick Knapinski of the Appleton Post-Crescent. "This is what Division III is supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about huge arenas." 
    Lawrence would face Illinois Wesleyan University in the Sweet 16, and the Titans came into Alexander Gym as the team that held down the No. 1 ranking at the season's outset. 
    The Vikings were hot in the first half and made nine 3-pointers before the break. Lawrence shot 72.7 percent from the floor in the opening 20 minutes and held a 45-33 lead. 
    "After shooting 72 percent in the first half, I was hoping we'd be up by more than 12 at halftime," Tharp said.
    Wesleyan chipped away at the lead and finally grabbed the advantage for good on a 3-pointer with 4:01 left. The Titans went up by as many as six points when Kyle MacGillis hit a 3-pointer with 34 seconds left to cut the lead to 69-66. The Titans turned it over on the next possession, but Lawrence missed a 3-pointer that would have tied it. Matt Arnold made two free throws with nine seconds left to seal a 71-68 victory.
    Lawrence's bid for a perfect season ended at 25-1, but the Vikings left behind a legacy of a March filled with madness and memories to last a lifetime. 

No. 12 (tie) From the bottom of the pile to All-American/Cross country takes eighth at NCAA meet
    Lawrence cross country star Josh Janusiak and the 1950 cross country team share the No. 12 position with a pair of remarkable moments.
    Janusiak put together a stirring comeback at the 2018 NCAA Division III Championships to become Lawrence's second All-American in cross country. Running at Lake Breeze Golf Course in Winneconne, Wis., on Nov. 17, Janusiak got off to a strong start and found himself in the top 20 about 1,000 meters into the 8,000-meter event.
    Coming to an area when the course narrowed, Janusiak was tripped and went down with multiple other runners. With more than a half-dozen runners on top of him, Janusiak yelled at them to get off and get moving. Once the melee cleared, Janusiak found himself way back beyond 150th place, a long way from his goal of finishing in the top 40 to earn All-America honors.
    "It was surreal at the biggest meet of my running career that I end up trapped under a pile of 10 or so runners for five to 10 seconds," Janusiak said at the time. 
    Faced with a huge hole to dig out of, Janusiak got to work. He quickly started working his way through the elite field and passed more than 120 runners over the next 6,000-plus meters. 
    When he crossed the line, Janusiak was in 32nd place and an All-American with a time of 24:55.3. 
    "I'm really proud that I was able to work my way back to All-American," Janusiak said. "It was the most mentally and physically difficult thing I've ever done."
    The NCAA Championships capped an amazing season for Janusiak, who won his third consecutive Midwest Conference title and three other meet titles that fall.

Josh Janusiak, right, on his way to becoming an All-American at the 2018 NCAA Championships.

    The 1950 Lawrence cross country team was one of the best in school history. It featured stars like Paul Elsberry, Bill Sievert and Don Helgeson, and they led the team to the Midwest Conference title with the lowest point total in league history at 34. After their triumph at the conference championships on Nov. 11, Lawrence was then invited to compete in the 12th NCAA Championships in East Lansing, Mich., on Nov. 27.
    Running in the race on the Michigan State campus, Lawrence was going up against huge schools like Penn State, Indiana, Illinois, Marquette, Tennessee, Purdue and Wisconsin. Multiple small schools, Albion College, the College of Wooster and Oberlin College to name a few, also competed that frigid Michigan afternoon. 
    With Elsberry leading the way, Lawrence finished eighth in the team standings with 208 points, and that was tops among all the small schools competing. It's also the highest finish by a Lawrence team in the history of NCAA championships competition. Elsberry finished 30th in 22:23 over the four-mile course, and Helgeson was next in 37th. Sievert was 46th, DeWitt Inglis was right on his heels in 47th and Arden Horstman rounded out the scoring in 48th.  

No. 11 Buzzer-beater delivers Midwest Conference title
    The stakes were extremely high on Feb. 15, 2006, when the Lawrence men's basketball team walked into Van Male Field House in Waukesha, Wis., to face Carroll College. 
    The Vikings were ranked second in the nation and Carroll checked in at No. 14. Lawrence was unbeaten at 20-0 and sporting a 14-0 league record. Carroll had just one loss in the league, a setback to the Vikings earlier in the season. A Lawrence win meant a third consecutive Midwest Conference title and the dream of a perfect season alive.
    Carroll built its lead to nine at 47-38 with 14 minutes left in the contest in front of a standing-room only crowd. Lawrence then scored the game's next seven points, capped by Chris Braier's three-point play, to trim the lead to 47-45 with 11:53 remaining and it was game on.
    The game was tied for the ninth time at 58-58 with 2:34 left, but Keven Bradley buried a 3-pointer to give the Vikings a 61-58 edge with just over two minutes remaining. Carroll's Jason Scheper scored the next five points for a 63-61 lead with 1:11 left. Lawrence took a timeout and got the ball to Braier, who was fouled with 52 ticks left. He converted one free throw to cut the lead to 63-62.
    On the ensuing possession, Lawrence got a critical stop when a jumper by Carroll's James Johnson was off the mark, and the Vikings' Andy Hurley hauled in the rebound. Lawrence took another timeout with eight seconds left, and Carroll forced another inbounds play when the Pioneers tipped a pass out of bounds with 3.4 seconds remaining. 
    Kyle MacGillis took the inbounds pass and drove near the left side of the lane. As the double-team came to MacGillis, Bradley's defender turned his head and Lawrence's senior guard cut toward the hoop. MacGillis found Bradley, who made a layup at the buzzer to give Lawrence a 64-63 victory.
    "For a split second, there was shock," Bradley told Dick Knapinski of the Appleton Post-Crescent of the pass coming his way. "Then it's, 'You've got to finish it.' "
    MacGillis admitted he was going to take the last shot, but the defense forced his hand. "Well, of course, I was looking to score," MacGillis said. "I got double-teamed, and I saw Bradley at the last second so I passed it off."
    Braier finished with a double-double of 16 points and 10 rebounds to pace Lawrence. Ben Rosenblatt added 11 points, and Hurley finished with 10 points and nine rebounds.    
    Lawrence would ascend to the nation's No. 1 ranking and finish with a 22-0 regular season. The Vikings rolled past Knox College in the semifinals of the Midwest Conference Tournament to set up another showdown with Carroll at Alexander Gymnasium. In another tight game, Lawrence got a critical 3-pointer from Ben Klekamp down the stretch and beat Carroll 68-62 in the title game to receive an automatic berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament. 

The Top 25 Countdown ...
No. 25 Lawrence football makes ABC-TV debut vs. Cornell in 1980
No. 24 Lawrence football beats Coe 14-10 in 1986 MWC Championship Game
No. 23 Lawrence women's soccer beats Aurora 2-1 for first NCAA Tournament win
No. 22 Aljay Wren and Nick Maxam team up for 99-yard touchdown pass
No. 21 Remarkable turnaround for women's basketball
No. 20 Jim Miller takes 12th at 1978 NCAA Cross Country Championships
No. 19 Basketball stars Kenya Earl, Brad Sendell chase scoring titles
No. 18 Cross country sweeps Midwest Conference titles in 2021
No. 17 Keven Bradley scores final 20 points for men's basketball in win over Ripon
No. 16 Men's basketball breaks 54-year drought by winning 1997 Midwest Conference title

The countdown continues on Aug. 12 with Nos. 6-10.