Anyone thinking that the Penn State baseball club can't produce on offense should ask the New York University pitchers how their weekend went.

Penn State certainly brought the lumber, or the metal rather, to the Gotham City. The Nittany Lions (7-3, 3-0 New Penn Conference) swept a three-game series from the Bobcats (0-3, 0-3) with wins of 16-0, 13-2 and 10-0. All of those games were shortened to five innings because of the 10-run mercy rule. Penn State opened the weekend with an 8-6 victory against King's College (7-4) on Friday. In addition to the 39 runs Penn State scored against NYU, the team tallied 41 hits in the series. Despite having not played a game in 17 days, Penn State baseball club coach Dan Day said he was not surprised by his team's play.

"NYU was not as good as they have been in the past," Day said. "We played at our level, not down to their level, and blew them out of the water."

The fourth inning of the second game against NYU summed up Penn State's play this weekend. A trio of home runs helped the Lions score 10 of their 13 runs in that inning. Outfielder Rick Dietz had one of the home runs, while the other two both came off of the bat of catcher Joe Kazlowski.

"It was a great feeling," Kazlowski said. "I've never been too much of a home run hitter, but I got two good pitches and was able to get the bat on them."

Kazlowski said the team needed to see the live pitching after having sat out for so long. Penn State did not practice a lot over the two weeks and the players were rusty heading into the weekend, Kazlowski said. After the weekend, he said the team was back on the right path.

Penn State's pitching staff also benefited from the team's offensive explosion. Without having to deal with the usual pressures of pitching in close games, Jimmy Donovan (1-1), Carmon Comunale (2-0), Greg Lisa (1-0) and Bill Lippert (2-1) were all victorious on the mound for the Lions.

The tone for the weekend was actually set during the game against King's College, Day said. In a game in which Penn State had only five hits and was losing at one point, the team had to regroup and show the character that would carry over to the rest of the weekend.

"We started sloppy and the bats were dead [against King's College]," Day said. "But we got everything together and we went into NYU firing on all cylinders."

Along with serving as the first live-game action for Penn State in more than two weeks, this weekend also served the purpose of kicking off the 2004 New Penn schedule for both Penn State and NYU. With the six conference teams only playing each other three times, and games subject to being cancelled at any time, it is a big boost to Penn State to jump out to a quick start.

"You lose a game here or there and someone is right on your heels," Day said. "But it is also really hard to play catch-up."