The sting felt after last season's ACHA National Championship game loss to Illinois was somewhat relieved this weekend when the No. 4 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers swept the No. 1 Illini in front of the two largest crowds Greenberg Ice Pavilion has seen this season.

"We're on a roll. This team is starting to get more and more confident. They're learning to adjust when we need them to," Icers coach Joe Battista said of his team, which has now won 13 consecutive games.

Friday night's 5-4 win and Saturday afternoon's 6-3 victory will likely move the Icers to at least the No. 2 ranking when the next ACHA coaches poll comes out Friday.

The sweep helped to ease, but certainly not erase, the image etched in the minds of the current Penn State sophomores, juniors and seniors who witnessed Illinois players skating around with the Murdoch Cup following the Illini's overtime victory against Penn State in last season's title game.

"I wasn't here last year, but the guys that were there -- the guys that lost in the championship at Nationals last year -- really wanted to win," freshman Luke DeLorenzo said.

DeLorenzo made sure he came through for those upperclassmen by scoring six of the Icers' 11 goals while assisting on two others. He scored two Friday and four Saturday. Fellow first-year Icer Nate Obringer added three goals and three assists in the two games against Illinois (18-4-0).

But it was an upperclassman, junior Mike McMullen, who struck early in Friday's game, firing the puck over the glove of Illinois goaltender Mike DeGeorge for a power play goal 4:53 into the game. Five minutes later, Obringer left DeGeorge visibly frazzled after stuffing a loose puck past the All-American goaltender to put Penn State up 2-0.

The defending champions would not go away easily, though. Illinois scored a goal less than a minute into the second period and eventually tied the game at 3-3 midway through the period. With momentum swinging in the Illini's favor, DeLorenzo went to work and scored two goals within a minute of each other late in the second, prompting Illinois coach Chad Cassel to pull DeGeorge in favor of backup Andy Sundt.

Saturday, the Icers (19-4-2) again jumped out to a two-goal lead in the first period, this time on two power play goals from DeLorenzo.

Illinois was a step behind Penn State for the remainder of the game. The teams traded goals in the second period until the Icers went up 4-2 on an Obringer wrist shot, which chased Sundt, the Illinois starter on Saturday, to the bench in favor of DeGeorge.

"We felt that if we could jump on them early, we could kind of, I don't want to say bury them, but we could get a step on them. They knew that they had lost [Friday night]. It was kind of like desperation for them. They had to win," DeLorenzo said.

Though DeLorenzo may not have wanted to say, "bury," that is exactly the mentality Battista has been trying to instill in this year's young team.

"You get a team down by two goals, you gotta bury them," Battista said Saturday. "We haven't been doing that. That last four games we've had two-goal leads and we ended up winning by a goal."

The two games this weekend proved to be different, and with rematches upcoming against No. 2 Ohio on the road and No. 3 Rhode Island at home, the Icers now find themselves in the driver's seat for a possible No. 1 seed heading into the national tournament in March.

"Everyone on the team was pretty hyped up," senior captain Brett Wilson said. "We knew how big this was. By playing these guys and Ohio in a couple weeks and Rhode Island in a couple weeks, we actually hold our fate in our own hands."