Soaring with momentum, the ISU men’s hockey team heads into the American Collegiate Hockey Association National Tournament this weekend.

The Cyclones, coming off a 6-5 come-from-behind win over Robert Morris on Saturday, will make their way to Athens, Ohio, today for the tournament.

Iowa State comes into the tournament, which is hosted by Ohio University, with an overall record of 26-16-2 and will be the No. 7 seed in the tournament.

The Cyclones will take on the Eastern Michigan Eagles at 1 p.m. Eastern Michigan comes into the tournament with a record of 17-18-4 and is the No. 11 seed.

In the three games played between Iowa State and Eastern Michigan, each team won once and there was one tie. The Cyclones defeated the Eagles in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League tournament consolation game 4-1. In that game, Iowa State scored three goals in the second period as four different Cyc-lones tallied goals. Jason Katz had 26 saves.

Penn State will be Iowa State’s second opponent on Friday also at 1 p.m. The Nittany Lions head into the national tournament as the three-time defending champions.

Senior captain Andrew Murdoch said that Saturday night’s victory was a big momentum booster for the Cyclones, who finished fourth in last season’s tournament.

“We feel good. We got a lot of momentum going into nationals. Eastern Michigan will be tough,” Andrew Murdoch said. “We also have Penn State so it’s nothing like playing the best team. We love to have this momentum going into it. It’s going to be a great week. Nationals is where it’s at.”

ISU head coach Alan Murdoch said his team, which usually plays a two-game series with its opponents on consecutive days, usually does better on the second night. That gives him a good feeling about the matchup with the Nittany Lions.

“We’ll get three good days of practice. We expect to go in and run into a pretty good powerhouse with Eastern Michigan. It’ll be a barn-burner,” Alan Murdoch said. “We tend to play a little bit better in the second game of a series, which will be against Penn State. That’ll be a huge game because if we win, that could potentially put us into the Final Four.”

Sophomore forward Brent Popadych, who scored two first-period goals in Saturday’s win, said the Cyclones needed a win like the one on Saturday.

“We needed a big game like this. We need to prove that we can come from behind,” Popadych said.

“We knew it all along, but we just had to prove it on paper that we can do this. We proved it to the fans and we proved it to ourselves.”