Wildcat hockey salvaged a split with No. 20 Eastern Michigan in its first home series after trailing much of the two-game series.

No. 17 Arizona (5-5-0) beat Eastern 4-3 Sunday afternoon after losing 5-3 Saturday night.

“We won, but it wasn’t a great weekend of hockey for us,” head coach Sean Hogan said. “It was very disappointing because we played so well at Ohio, we played so well at Illinois and just for whatever reason, we just had no jump.”

Near the second half of a four-minute Eastern Michigan penalty, junior forward Andrew Murmes scored the game winner with about 13 minutes remaining. He received the puck from sophomore defenseman Matt Nowicki near the Arizona goal and took it across the ice to score.

“Well actually, coach was calling me off and I just, I was mad and I just wanted to get the puck and go and Nowicki was able to give it to me with speed,” Murmes said.

Arizona outshot EMU 58 to 28 but only scored four goals, less than a day after out shooting the Eagles 58 to 24 in a 5-3 loss.

“This weekend was one of my more frustrating weekends as a coach here,” Hogan said.

Murmes scored after taking a slap shot to his leg earlier in the game while facing the goal. He immediately limped to the bench with a labored skate.

“My knee’s kinda, a little bit blown up, but nothing that’s gonna stop me from playing,” Murmes said.

With 3:48 left in the first, Arizona opened the scoring with a short-handed goal by freshman forward Dane Irving assisted by senior forward Brian Slugocki.

“It was good to get the win at the end there but we got to be better then them,” Murmes said. “That’s a team that we obviously should sweep, ASU beat them 9-2 and we’re not that far behind ASU.”

During the second period, Eastern Michigan scored on two five-on-three advantages. After Arizona had given up the first five-on-three goal, they committed another penalty and nearly killed the first, but committed a third with eight seconds left in the first to have three in the penalty box at once.

EMU would capitalize and take a 3-1 lead. The Eagles scored four goals on five-on-three advantages during the series.

Hogan, who had an intense conversation with the officials during the second intermission, didn’t know the penalty called but didn’t want to blame the officials.

“Half of them I didn’t even see what the guy was calling to be honest with you,” Hogan said. “You can’t win a hockey game with three guys on the ice to their five.”

Arizona was one for five on power plays Sunday, after going 1-for-10 with an extra man on Saturday.

“I think we just needed a kind of character check and I’m glad that we got our bad game out of the way and our bad weekend, because we got ASU coming in,” Murmes said.