After an impressive series split last weekend against then-No. 3 Minot State University, Cyclone women’s hockey (5-13-1) prepares to take its game on the road to face the St. Scholastica Saints for the fourth time this season.

In previous meetings, the American Collegiate Hockey Association’s Division 2 No. 3 Saints (8-8-1) have come out victorious over the Cyclones, although not by lack of effort on Iowa State’s part.

“The games against St. Scholastica were not games where they blew us out of the water,” sophomore Erin Wessling said.

In the Cyclones’ and Saints’ last meeting over the weekend of Jan. 23 and 24, they kept the game interesting, with each team alternating leads. The Cyclones headed into many of the periods ahead of the Saints, but were unable to maintain their leads.

St. Scholastica has been a force all season and has been hot of late, winning four of its past five games. The Cyclones, on the other hand, have struggled recently, but finally snapped their four-game losing streak with a win over Minot State last weekend.

The last three times the Cyclones and Saints met the games were close, but St. Scholastica managed to play off the Cyclones’ exhaustion and slight lack of effort in the third periods and come out with a sweep.

Heading into the third period on Jan. 23, the Cyclones were ahead of the Saints, 4-3. But with the Saints having a bench twice the size of the Cyclones’, they were able to capitalize on the Cyclones exhaustion and scored two goals, to win the game, 6-4.

“We definitely have a short bench and it is hard to keep up with teams that are twice the size of us,” Wessling said. “At the same time, I’ve seen before that we are capable of pushing through it to win, we just need to keep the momentum through the entire third period.”

Maintaining momentum throughout the entire game isn’t the only thing the Cyclones need to hope to overcome to beat the Saints. They also need to play a strong defensive game against St. Scholastica, which had a weekend total of 114 shots when it faced Iowa State two weekends ago in the Ames/ISU Ice Arena.

“We’ll definitely have to focus on our defensive coverage this weekend,” coach Joe McCarron said. “St. Scholastica got too many rebound opportunities against us last time and we’ll have to do a better job of tying them up in front of the net and clearing the puck from in front of [goalie] Katie Faulds.”

Because of the Cyclones’ previous experience playing St. Scholastica, they head in to the weekend confident and are searching for their first sweep of the season.

“We have played them three times now. We know how they play, and we know what style of play we need to use to win,” Wessling said. “I have no doubt in my team; that we can pull a sweep off in Duluth.”