There are certain moments that define teams. This may have been one of those moments.

The Penn State baseball team may have turned the corner this weekend as the Nittany Lions took three of four games from a strong Purdue team in West Lafayette, Ind.

The Lions (8-10, 3-1 Big Ten) won Friday's contest 6-0, split Saturday's doubleheader -- they lost the first game 11-6, but rallied to thrash Purdue (11-10, 1-3) 13-3 in the second game -- and then pounded out 15 hits in a 14-4 victory yesterday.

The Lions began their first Big Ten series on Friday with a gem of a pitching performance from junior right-hander Clayton Hamilton (2-2), who two-hit the Boilermakers in a 6-0 shutout. Hamilton had a no-hitter going into the sixth inning, and had allowed only one baserunner before Purdue's Eric Wolfe singled to center field to break up the effort. Penn State's ace struck out 13 batters and walked only two for his second win of the year, and junior right-hander Jim Farrell pitched a scoreless ninth inning to wrap up the win.

Penn State baseball coach Joe Hindelang said that Hamilton was simply unhittable in his eight innings of work, something the coaches have expected all season long.

"He over-matched their hitters," Hindelang said. "They weren't even close to hitting him."

The following day, Purdue dealt the Lions a mighty blow with eight runs in the fourth inning to storm to an 11-6 win. Penn State's Josh Palm (2-2) gave up five earned runs in three innings and Jared Hopewell allowed four without recording an out in the disastrous fourth frame. The Boilermakers chased Penn State pitchers all over the yard to grab the lead from the Lions, who put two runs on the board in the top half of the inning to go up 4-2.

With the momentum in the series swinging entirely to the Boilermakers and Hamilton's masterpiece seeming a distant memory, the Lions crushed their hosts 13-3 for an important win in the nightcap on Saturday. Penn State sophomore first baseman Clint Eury, who had been struggling mightily from the plate, hit a two-run second inning home run, the first of his career, to give Penn State a 2-0 advantage.

The Lions also got a solid effort from junior catcher Matt Harter, who tied a school record with three doubles in the win. Harter, the ninth Penn Stater with three doubles in a game, went 8-for-16 from the plate with four runs, eight runs batted in in the four games and homerun yesterday on his 21st birthday.

Penn State junior Aaron Tressler (2-1) continued his solid work from the mound, going the full seven innings for the win.

In yesterday's game, the Lions stunned the Boilermakers in the fourth inning, with 13 runs in the frame to break the scoreless tie. Penn State had 10 hits from 18 batters in the fourth inning and slammed 15 hits in the game. Farrell (2-0), who started his second game of the season despite pitching an inning on Friday, saw his streak of 19 consecutive scoreless innings come to an end in the fourth inning, when Purdue's Nick McIntyre hit a solo home run, but pitched seven solid innings for the win.

With a solid start to the Big Ten campaign, Penn State began to erase the memory of the disastrous doubleheader at Cornell last Tuesday. In the two losses to the Big Red, Penn State hitters combined for only nine hits -- hardly a likely predictor of the 47 hits and 39 runs Penn State pounded out this weekend.

"This is huge," Harter said. "If you were to ask anyone on the team and they would give you an honest answer, they would have said if we would have split with them we would have been happy. To take three out of four here is huge."