Joe Hindelang has been a baseball coach for a pretty long time.

He's been a part of a lot of games and he's seen a lot of things.

But this past weekend, Hindelang saw something that impressed even his experienced eyes. It was the Miami Hurricanes, the best college baseball team Hindelang has ever coached against.

"We played Arizona State last spring and they were pretty good and we went out to Stanford in 1996, but this team [Miami] was the best we ever played against," he said.

Accordingly, the Hurricanes swept the three-game series with the Lions at Mark Light Stadium in Coral Gables, Fla., winning 6-1 and 1-0 in a doubleheader on Saturday, and then winning the series finale 11-3 yesterday afternoon. Penn State fell to 8-9 while Miami improved to 22-5.

It wasn't so much that Penn State played poorly, but that it was up against a college baseball dynasty that doesn't skip a beat.

"They have no weaknesses," Hindelang said. "Their pitching is dominating, they can all hit and defensively, they don't give you a thing. They have an entire infield of future pros and all of their outfielders are fleet footed. To get a hit, you have to sting the ball to somewhere they're not close to."

It was the Miami pitching and defense that really did in the Lions. Over the three games, Penn State only scored five runs and suffered a stretch of 18 innings without scoring a run.

"Their pitching was really tough," said catcher Matt Harter, who provided a lonely offensive highlight with a home run yesterday. "They just don't give you much and they keep you off balance."

Against a team like Miami, mistakes are exploited to their full degree and the Lions found that out the hard way. The Penn State pitching staff had trouble closing out innings and quelling potential Miami rallies. Time after time throughout the weekend, Miami made things happen with two outs.

"Of the 18 runs they scored in all three games, 15 came with two outs," Hindelang said. "It doesn't matter who you're playing, you can't do that against anyone. The pitchers need to take responsibility."

But, in a glass-half-full sort of way, if the Lions had just been able to get a few clutch outs here and there, they could have stolen a game or two against a legitimate national title contender.

Penn State's best chance for a win came in game two on Saturday. After giving up a run in the second inning, starting pitcher Aaron Tressler settled down and began to plow his way through the Miami lineup.

"I worked the changeup a lot this game," Tressler said. "It really helped out my other pitches, especially my fastball. I could be more aggressive and go inside on the hitters."

Tressler worked for six innings and Josh Palm and Clint Eury combined for three more innings of scoreless baseball.

But the Penn State offense just couldn't come through and the efforts by Tressler, Palm and Eury were mostly for naught.

"At the end of the game, it started to sink in that we just needed one run," Tressler said. "I was pretty upset because we were so close. I'm mad at myself. The one guy who scored for them, I walked."

Hindelang and the rest of the crew hope they have left South Florida with more than just three losses. They hope that the true value of a trip to Miami in March will be seen in a Big Ten series in April or May.

"The jury on this trip is still out," Hindelang said. "We'll start seeing how much it helps us."