After playing for 11 consecutive weekends, with more than half its games against nationally ranked opponents, perhaps Colorado College needed a good long break more than anything else.

Junior goaltender Josh Thorimbert gave his team a wonderful chance to head into the holidays on a positive note Saturday, but the usually loud Tigers offense managed barely a whisper on its way to another frustrating loss.

St. Cloud State completed a home-ice sweep at the National Hockey Center, skating to a 3-1 victory that extended CC's winless skid to a season-long five games and sank them below the .500 mark in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association for the first time in 2012-13.

The good news is that Colorado College, now 8-10-2 overall and 5-6-1 in league play after going 1-7-2 since mid-November, doesn't play again until early January. Maybe, by then, the weary Tigers will rediscover the spark that carried them to a 7-3 start.

On this night in chilly Minnesota, with Thorimbert turning away 27 shots at the other end of the ice, they were able to test SCSU's Ryan Faragher with only 17 of their own. Faragher lost his shutout on a screen shot from just above the right faceoff circle by senior defenseman Joe Marciano at 6:28 of the second period.

The unassisted tally was Marciano's first of the campaign. The 17th-ranked Huskies, who turned the puck over on the play, made few other mistakes while leap-frogging into first place in the WCHA with a 9-5 record in conference play. They're 11-7 overall.

Freshman forward Kalle Kossila, who notched the game winner for St. Cloud State in Friday's series opener, scored the only goal of the first period when he picked the far upper corner of the net from the left wing after gathering in a pass from Kevin Gravel.

With the teams skating four-on-four early in the second frame, Marciano unleashed a wrister that sailed over Faragher's shoulder and under the crossbar while Archie Skalbeck provided an effective distraction in front of the cage. The goal pulled CC even at the 6:28 mark, but the Huskies countered with a pair of tallies just 98 seconds apart midway through the frame to regain command.

Team captain Ben Hanowski made it 2-1 at 11:59, converting off a nice feed from the corner by Andrew Prochno, before Jonny Brodzinksi tipped another pass by Prochno past Thorimbert at 13:37.

Thorimbert kept it close with a number of point-blank saves from that point on, steering away all 10 shots he faced in the final stanza, but his solid effort between the pipes was in vain.