ST. CLOUD, Minn. — The Wisconsin women’s hockey team must have watched the men’s team play Friday night, because its Saturday game looked eerily similar.

The No. 6 Badgers lost 4-2 to split their series against the St. Cloud State Huskies, despite putting up a whopping 56 shots on goal. The night before, the men’s team scored just once in 39 shots on goal.

“I would say it was pretty frustrating because we had a ton of opportunities and a ton of rebounds we couldn’t put away,” sophomore center Brooke Ammerman said.

Despite UW’s inability to figure out SCSU goaltender Ashley Nixon, the game was tied 2-2 until the 16:37 mark of the third period. The Huskies’ Meaghan Pezon was able to pick off the puck and take it on an uncontested breakaway. Pezon had another Husky forward skate with her to make it a two-on-nobody rush, but elected to keep it for herself, shooting low to the left to beat Badger goaltender Becca Ruegsegger.

Pezon sealed the deal for St. Cloud minutes later, scoring on a shot from the point on the power play. UW’s Saige Pacholok was called for slashing and Stefanie McKeough got a checking from behind penalty 75 seconds later to give SCSU a five-on-three advantage.

“Yeah, it’s tough when the last half of the third period, you make a mental error that leads to two breakaways against,” UW head coach Tracey DeKeyser said. “And you’re sitting in the box unnecessarily, we struggled with penalties all weekend and we’ve got to do a better job of staying out of the box.”

Wisconsin actually struck first in the game, when Ammerman deflected a pass by Brianna Decker past Nixon at 9:03 of the first period.

“Decker made a great play off that player, just kind of dribbled it through the net,” Ammerman said. “I just went hard to the net and it hit my stick and I got lucky and it went in.”

The Huskies responded three minutes later when UW’s Jasmine Giles was called for hooking. SCSU’s Felicia Nelson scored just 15 seconds into the ensuing power play.

UW finished the game with 11 penalties and gave up two power play goals.

“I think we were pretty undisciplined all game, we had four or five penalties, a five-on-three and we got through that. But I think it was kind of a precursor of what was going to happen,” Ammerman said. “So I think this week we’ll focus on discipline and just not taking those penalties that are going to cost us at the end.”

The Badgers reclaimed the lead again with 1:58 remaining in the first, when sophomore forward Carolyne Prevost scored on a shorthanded breakaway. Prevost was able to force a turnover and take the puck up the left wing before making a move on Nixon and scoring.

“Before the period (assistant coach) Peter Johnson said, ‘You know, the goalie’s coming out a little bit, so to deke,'” Prevost said. “So that’s all I was thinking the whole time, I have to deke on her.”

The Badgers dropped to 8-5-1 on the season and just 6-4 in the WCHA. Wisconsin hasn’t been able to gain any consistent momentum this season and this loss was especially frustrating considering all the chances the Badgers had to score. UW outshot SCSU 56-32 and got just two goals, and against Minnesota earlier this season was outshot 40-15, yet won 5-2.

Despite Pezon’s game-winning goal, the Huskies’ MVP was Nixon, who consistently turned away chance after chance by UW.

“Their goalie played absolutely an amazing game, and we’re getting the best of every goalie this year, so I guess we have to expect that,” Prevost said.

“We’ve faced that a lot this year. We’ve had some hot goaltenders on other teams and we haven’t been able to finish,” DeKeyser added. “And I give credit to Nixon, she did a great job.”

Aside from penalty problems, the Badgers played well over the weekend. UW had won the series opener Friday afternoon, 2-1. Nixon was a wall that game as well, turning aside 39 of 41 UW shots. That win was just the second time this season that the Badgers won the series opener.

“I think we overall played really well this weekend. St. Cloud has historically … always been a tough place to play, regardless of who’s on our team for Wisconsin,” Ammerman said. “They’re always going to bring their ‘A’ game, their goalie’s been hot, and we just got unlucky and made some pretty not very good plays at the end and it cost us.”