The Cyclones seem to be in a little bit of a funk. The No. 11 ISU hockey team has lost four out its last five games, including one game that was against the North Iowa Bulls, a junior A team in the NA3HL.

After a 6-1-0 start to the season, it looked as though the Cyclones (7-4-1) were poised for a strong season before being swept in a two-game set against No. 2 Arizona State.

ISU coach Al Murdoch said he has been “raising his voice” in practice this week to get the team going.

“Nobody that we play this season the rest of the way, nobody’s going to give us a game,” Murdoch said. “We have to earn it, we have to win it.”

Murdoch said nobody on the team is performing better than he thought they would and about 95 percent of the team is performing at a lower level than he expected.

Through the first seven games of the season, the Cyclones averaged 6.43 goals per game. In their last five games, they’ve only averaged 2.4 goals per game.

After dropping four of the last five games, Murdoch said he is worried about where their season is going. He said dropping the game against the North Iowa Bulls is the least of his worries and that his biggest worry is “that these guys get a little tougher mentally.”

ISU forward James Buttermore, who is currently on a six-game point streak, said he thinks they should have had two wins last weekend against Robert Morris.

“We took one period off all last weekend and that’s what killed us in our loss,” Buttermore said.

The Cyclones will try to bounce back this weekend at home against No. 10 Illinois.