The ISU hockey club hosted Life University this weekend at the Ames Ice Arena and scored two emotional wins, including an overtime thriller Friday night.

Cyclone defender Tory Larson tied the score 8-8 with just 41 seconds left in the final period on Friday, sending the game into sudden death overtime and setting up former Des Moines Buccaneer Mark Krueger, who slapped in the game-winner in the extra stanza.

“It was a good team. It’s nice to beat a team like that, that wins national championships,” Iowa State’s Tony Daniels said.

Life has won the American Collegiate Hockey Association’s Division 2 championship four of the last five years.

“Tory’s game tying goal was big,” Daniels said. “That got us going into overtime, and Krueger took over from there.”

Jeremy Meyer played a major part in the Cyclone win, scoring three goals for the Cyclones, who trailed throughout most of Friday’s game.

Cyclones Jason McCollom, Andrew Murdoch and Mike Gilbertson also added goals.

ISU head coach Al Murdoch said that Meyer, who participated in the World University Games in Poland last February, has shown improvement since then.

“I saw his pace just pick up 25 or 30 percent after the World University Games. He saw the players from Russia, Ukraine and all over the world that were just so quick and good,” Murdoch said. “He’s got fast feet and fast hands as you can see with the three goal hat trick; that was an excellent night for him.”

Five out of the six Cyclone scorers competed at the World University Games last year, Murdoch said.

With that experience behind them, Murdoch held confidence in his team that they could come back when Life took a two-goal lead in the second period.

“As I told our team between the second and third period, `we’re a team that wins third periods. If we win the third period, we got a shot at winning the game, and if we go into overtime, we win more overtimes than we lose'” he said.

Assistant coach Brian Wierson, who works with the forwards, said he knew the team would score a lot of goals.

He was just waiting to see who would be making them.

“A game where you score nine goals, you’re going to have somebody with three goals, another guy with a couple, so you see who your gamers are in a game like this,” he said.

Overall the coaching staff was pleased with their team, especially for this early in the season. The team has only been on the ice for three weeks but was antsy to get the season started, Murdoch said.

“It’s always exciting to get going.to get into the action,” he said. “We’re pretty healthy. We had a pretty good recruiting year, but we also have a lot of upper classmen. We’ve got seven seniors on the team.”

The team wasn’t alone in their excitement though. The stands were packed full on Friday night and Saturday’s 5-4 win brought an even larger crowd.

“Man alive, it was standing room only at the new ice arena in Ames,” Murdoch said.

Fans can expect more of the same in the stands in the upcoming weeks.

“The series that are coming up next are just unbelievable. Michigan is coming in and then Minot State, they’re mostly Canadians too, and then Illinois. The roof blows off when we play Illinois, they’re just incredible,” Murdoch said.