The No. 8 ISU hockey team has a lot going for them this week and going into this weekend. On Wednesday, they received an invitation to the ACHA National Tournament at Kent State. The Cyclones missed out on the National Tournament last year for the first time in team history. The Cyclones will play No. 9 Oklahoma in the first round on Mar. 3.

This Friday, the Cyclones are traveling to Athens, Ohio for the CSCHL tournament. The Cyclones (26-8-5) will play No. 11 Illinois (13-15-1) in the first round. The last time the Cyclones and the Illini met, the Cyclones swept the two game series at the “big pond” in Champagne, Illi.

“We always have a rivalry against them,” defenseman and assistant captain Justin Wilkinson said. “We play these teams two to four times every year so we always develop a rivalry against them, and Illinois is one of those teams.”

The Cyclones are currently on top of the CSCHL regular season standings with 82 points, one point ahead of No. 3 Lindenwood. Illinois is currently 6th in the CSCHL regular season standings with 40 points, eight points ahead of Indiana and eight points behind Kent State.

The CSCHL tournament and the two-game series with Waldorf a week later have no bearing on the national tournament, but ISU goaltender Paul Karus said they’re not looking past it.

“We’re going to take that as a preview for the national tournament because a lot of the teams that are going to be at the Central States tournament are going to be at nationals,” Karus said. “At this point in the year you really can’t take a game off.”

Indiana is the only CSCHL team that did not qualify for the ACHA Natoinal Tournament.

Karus won a Continental Hockey Association National Championship with the Massachusetts Maple Leafs, his junior team and has been to the ACHA National Tournament twice with the Cyclones, including the 2009-10 season when they lost to Lindenwood in the National Championship game. The Cyclones have a lot of young players on their team who were not there that season though.

“Our team is fairly new,” Karus said. “So for some of the older guys, yeah, it could be in the back of their mind, but truly, I don’t think they’re really thinking about it.”

The Cyclones will play Illinois in the first round of the CSCHL tournament this Friday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. at Bird Arena in Athens, Ohio.