Box Score Nothing in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference seems to come easy. Especially victories.

The University of Minnesota Duluth has learned that lesson weekend after weekend during the league's inaugural season. Saturday night they found themselves locked up in another nail biter, holding off a late Colorado College charge and claiming a 2-1 victory. UMD, which took a five of six points in the two game weekend series, improved to 13-9-4 overall and 8-6-2-2 in the NCHC (good for second place), while hiking its unbeaten streak to seven games (4-0-3).

The No. 17 Bulldogs struck first when freshman left winger Kyle Osterberg redirected a Willie Raskob shot from the point on the power play with 29 seconds left in the first period. Thanks to some solid goaltending from UMD's Aaron Crandall and his Colorado College counterpart, Josh Thorimbert, that remained the game's lone goal until the 7:39 mark of the third period when sophomore left winger Cal Decowski took a perfect cross ice feed from Joe Basaraba and buried a shot into the right upper corner. Colorado College broke the shutout just three seconds into a five-minute power play when Ian Young broke in from the left wing and scored right off the face off. That goal broke a streak of 29 consecutive power plays the Bulldogs had killed off at home, a run that dated back six games.

"We started off really slow in the first period, but found our legs at the end of the first and got a big goal," said Osterberg who now shares the UMD goals scoring lead with 10. "We continued to play well through throughout the rest of the game."

Aaron Crandall, making his 11th consecutive start, finished with 31 saves including 24 in the opening 40 minutes while Thorimbert made 24 stops.

The Bulldogs will be in St. Cloud, Minn., next weekend (Feb. 7-8) for a pair of NCHC clashes with St. Cloud State University. UMD hasn't lost a game away from Duluth in almost three months (Nov. 22), going 6-0-1 since then.