Despite this, the No. 9 Spartans came out and swept a tough Colgate team, 6-3 on Friday and 2-1 on Saturday, at Munn Ice Arena.

“It’s hard to sweep anybody,” MSU head coach Rick Comley said. “I don’t care if you’re at home or on the road. If they would’ve had one, it would’ve been a great weekend for them. As a result, we get something real positive to build on come Monday.”

Friday, the Spartans jumped on the Raiders for three first-period goals in a game that was never really close. Freshman forward Dustin Gazley and junior forward Matt Schepke each tallied two goals in the win.

Saturday, it looked like more of the same as the Spartans came out firing with two goals in the first 10 minutes.

Junior forward Tim Kennedy got MSU started at 6:45 on the power play when he deflected a slap pass from senior defenseman Daniel Vukovic into the net. Junior forward Justin Abdelkader picked up the other assist.

Less than three minutes later, a beautiful passing combination resulted in MSU’s second goal.

Sophomore defenseman Michael Ratchuk held the puck in at the blue line, sent a cross-ice pass to junior forward Tim Crowder, who sent a cross-ice pass to Abdelkader who took a quick stride and sent a blistering snapshot over the shoulder of Colgate goaltender Mark Dekanich.

“I didn’t really give the goalie a chance to get set,” Abdelkader said. “Those are things you work on in practice, a quick release, not really giving the goalie a chance to get set up.”

Colgate responded with a 5-on-3 power-play goal to make it 2-1 later in the period and the game went into, for the most part, a defensive mode, but it wasn’t without excitement.

Midway through the second period, junior defenseman Brandon Gentile was whistled for pulling down Colgate’s leading scorer, Tyler Burton, on a breakaway attempt. Burton was awarded a penalty shot.

Burton skated in on junior goaltender Jeff Lerg and didn’t try to do anything fancy, just tried to fire a shot past Lerg, but was denied by Lerg’s blocker.

“When guys come down to shoot it straight, they have a corner already picked,” Lerg said. “I think he had one picked, he was going to shoot low blocker and just didn’t place it there.

“I thought for sure he was going to put a deke on because he has some good hands and is a shifty skater.”

In the third period, Colgate was able to pull its goalie to skate one man up with over a minute left, but the Spartans held off the charge.

“You’ve got to win tight hockey games,” Comley said.

“The encouraging thing for me was that we played very solid in the third period, created several good scoring chances, didn’t give up a lot of great chances. You’ve got to win pretty and you’ve got to win ugly. It’s a lot better to win pretty, but you’ve got to win those tight games and tonight was one of those games.”

The Spartans will open CCHA conference play next weekend when they welcome Northern Michigan for a two-game series.