The win means the Knights will play in the NCAA tournament after receiving the automatic bid from the UMAC conference. The win felt especially good considering where the Knights were a couple of years ago when they went 0-10 in both Arndt’s and Freese’s sophomore year.

It was another big day for Arndt, who had touchdown receptions of 30 and 63 yards in the win. He finished the day with 155 yards on four receptions. He said he never really thought about the possibility of one day hoisting the UMAC trophy on his home field.

“I never thought that far in the future, I was always looking at the present,” Arndt said. “We always put in the work and we would always trust in the process, in the offseason and during the season, it was a team championship here.”

It wasn’t easy a few years ago, but Freese and the rest of the defense also bought into coach Mark Stein and what he brought to the team.

“This is great, from four years ago, or three years ago when we didn’t win a game, this is just everybody that loves football,” said Freese, who finished with seven tackles. “We love the game so much and we just really bought in to the process. It’s working, you’ve just got to trust it.”

While neither team put any points on the board in the first quarter, the second quarter was all MLC’s, mainly Arndt. He caught a 30-yard touchdown pass from Zach Bloomquist just 45 seconds into the quarter to give him his 26th career touchdown reception, which is a school record. He later scored on a 63-yard reception that put the Knights up 12-0.

Arndt then caught a 56-yard reception and that set up a Josh DeNoyer 2-yard run to make it 20-0 following the 2-point conversion. MLC added another touchdown late in the quarter 26-0 with 36 seconds left when Joshua Kren scored on a 5-yard run and the Knights carried that big lead into halftime.

Arndt was beating the MacMurray defenders all quarter and the wet, slippery conditions didn’t seem to bother him.

“We always say no excuses no matter what the weather is, we knew it was going to be like this, we just came in and did our game plan with the result that we wanted,” Arndt said.

The Highlanders got their lone touchdown in the third quarter on Nick Valentine’s 5-yard reception. But the Knights weren’t about to let them back in the game and they scored on their next drive when Bloomquist ran in from 2 yards out for the 33-6 lead. DeNoyer closed the scoring with a 7-yard run to make 40-7.

DeNoyer finished with 126 yards rushing on 24 carries and two touchdowns. Bloomquist threw for 192 yards and two touchdowns.

Defensively, Abel Bain led the Knights with 12 tackles and Ben Arndt finished with 10 tackles. The Knights had 450 yards of total offense compared to 307 for the Highlanders.

MLC (8-1, 7-0) will host Crown next Saturday. After that, they will play in the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history.

“It’s awesome, I didn’t think that we would get this far and here we are,” Arndt said.

Freese is also excited about the chance.

“It’s great, we’ve been working towards this, everyone before us, all the upper classmen when I was a freshman, we were all working towards this point and we finally got it,” Freese said.