In their four years as part of Cyclone hockey, this year’s seniors have accomplished a lot, but until this past weekend, beating the Fighting Illini on their home ice wasn’t one of them.

The seniors put their first ever win against Illinois in a hard-fought 1–0 victory in the opening game of the series, before pushing them to the brink in game two, but falling 4–3 in a shootout.

“It was amazing,” said senior forward Brent Cornelius. “Coming into that series I knew and all the other seniors knew, that we had to leave it all on the ice. Pete (Majkozak) hit a bunch of posts and probably should have had at least four goals, but they just wouldn’t roll for him. Our seniors definitely played a key part and were performing at a high level.”

The Cyclones only goal in the first game came off the stick of Mike Lebler midway through the second period. Junior goaltender Erik Hudson anchored one of the more impressive defensive efforts of the season against the defending ACHA runner up. 

Hudson and the defensemen have a history of stepping up their performance against the fighting Illini. Hudson has carried a shutout into the third period all three years he has faced Illinois and this time he was able to finish it off.

“I always like to play against them because they have a good team and I usually do pretty well when we play against them,” Hudson said. “I’ve been wanting to get a shutout for about three years now and I finally got one.”

Winning on the road has been one of the Cyclones’ weaknesses as of late, so almost coming away with the sweep against one of the ACHA’s perennial powerhouses was a big step forward for the team.

In the second game, the Cyclones  fell into a 3–1 deficit before storming back to tie the game at 3–3 midway through the third period. Iowa State kept up the pressure on the offensive end of the ice, but the Illini’s consistently strong goaltending core kept them at bay and was able to force a shootout. Illinois was then able to escape with a 4–3 victory.

“They came out with fire in their eyes,” Murdoch said. “It was alumni weekend, they had a standing room only crowd, and they didn’t want to get swept on their own ice.”

“We’re probably going to see Illinois again at the Central States tournament and then possibly again at the national tournament. Illinois is a team that didn’t lost a game two years ago and last year were in the ACHA finals, so to play them that well on their home ice is really good.”

Illinois can be one of the tougher road opponents over the course of the season largely in part to their Olympic sized rink they have dubbed “The Pond.” This is significantly larger than the rink the Cyclones play on and is harder for the younger players to adjust to.

“We had a couple new guys come on to the team this year and they didn’t know anything about the rink,” Cornelius said. “The rink is a little bit bigger than an Olympic sized rink so we had to make sure we had them prepared during the week. We had some pretty good workouts that week going into the game so we were in pretty good shape.”

The split improved the Cyclones record to 22–7–3 on the year and they are ranked No. 4 in the ACHA.