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HOUGHTON - Michigan Tech dug itself an early hole it couldn't climb out of Saturday night against St. Cloud State.

SCSU scored a pair of goals in the first period and made them stand up en route to a 3-1 win over the Huskies in Western Collegiate Hockey Association action.

Both of SCSU's goals came on the power play. Tony Mosey had the first goal at the 11:03 mark to put SCSU up 1-0.

A goal by Nick Oslund made it 2-0 after one. The goals were the first two SCSU had scored on the weekend with the man advantage.

Tech held SCSU without a goal on five power-play chances on Friday night. But just as it had the previous weekend against Colorado College, Tech's inability to kill off the two penalties proved to be the difference in the game.

"We certainly discussed it (taking penalties) and again I felt discipline got the better of us," Tech coach Jamie Russell said. "We took a penalty 195 feet from our net in the offensive zone that was unnecessary.

"We followed that up with a bad hook. Similar to Colorado College, the hit from behind, we've got somebody playing hard and I'm not upset with Steven Seigo and I'm not upset with John Kivisto, but the penalties, the ones I call unnecessary and lazy, we've got to get out of our game."

Michigan Tech came back to cut the lead to one in the second period. Malcolm Gwilliam's goal at the 2:21 mark pulled

Tech back to within one heading to the third.

The goal was Gwilliam's fifth of the season. He has scored four goals in Tech's last four games.

"I think we had some good traffic in front with Alex MacLeod going to the net," Gwilliam said of his latest tally. "Brett (Olson) made a good pass up to Steven (Seigo) and I just found a way to get the puck through and got a lucky bounce off the boards."

SCSU pushed its lead back to two early in the third. Brian Volpei's goal at 4:59 of the frame made it 3-1 and closed out the scoring.

After the goal by Volpei, Tech carried the play over the final 15 minutes. But SCSU goaltender Dan Dunn turned away every scoring chance.

He made consecutive stops on a Tech trip into the SCSU zone with just four minutes left that sealed the victory. Dunn finished with a total of 17 saves. SCSU is now 3-3-2 on the season. Michigan Tech is 2-4-0 overall and 1-3-0 in the WCHA and will host North Dakota Friday (7:07) and Saturday (7:37) nights.

K.D. Warvie can be reached at kwarvie@ mininggazette.com.