Cyclone Hockey began its last homestand of the regular season on Friday against the University of Central Oklahoma, falling 4-3 in the first game.

The Bronchos started the first period off strong, scoring the first two goals of the game, courtesy of Gage Joel and Nial Mills.

However, senior forward Tony Uglem cashed in for the Cyclones to cut the deficit in half less than a minute after the Bronchos scored their second goal.

The Bronchos then regained their two-goal lead on a Donald Danroth breakaway goal before heading into the intermission.

“They’re really good at spreading us out and hitting their wide guys…a lot of their offense [tonight] almost started with a breakaway or an odd-man rush, because they’re so fast,” Uglem said.

Senior forward Colton Kramer tallied a goal with 16:56 left in the second period to cut the Bronchos’ lead to 3-2, but the Bronchos’ Spencer Peratalo added a power-play goal later in the period to go up by two once again.

Uglem added another goal with 14:49 left in the third, but the Cyclones were unable to come back and tie the game in the closing minutes.

“We’ve got to put together a complete 60-minute game,” said head coach and general manager Jason Fairman.

In this most recent stretch of games, the Cyclones haven’t been able to get the results in the win column, despite playing good hockey.

The Cyclones battled hard tonight to change that, but were met with the same outcome.

“We’ve played well the last 10 games…some might argue that we’ve probably outplayed 80 to 85 percent of the games that we’ve had during this stretch, but we still lost,” Fairman said.

Prior to Friday night, the team hadn’t played at home since Feb. 9 against Colorado State. 

The players have enjoyed being back home, and tomorrow night, Cyclone Hockey will close out its regular season on senior night.

“Travel schedules can be tough, so being able to sleep in our own beds tonight and come back and have a pretty big crowd cheer for us tomorrow is hopefully going to put a little bit of charge into us,” said senior forward Adam Alcott.

After a weekend off next weekend, the team will then head to the CSCHL tournament, followed by the national tournament.

The Cyclones will aim to grab one more win during the regular season before the postseason begins.

“We definitely want to feel good going into the playoffs,” Alcott said. “[Saturday’s] the last game in this rink for a lot of us, so I think going out on a positive note will be beneficial to us.”