The situation facing the Penn State baseball team today should feel eerily familiar. And it should be enough to send chills down the spine of coach Joe Hindelang.
Around this same time last year, the Lions made the trip to upstate New York for a quick doubleheader against Cornell, expecting to come away with a sweep and springboard into the wilds of Big Ten play that loomed on the horizon.
But the overconfident Lions left instead with two crushing losses and their confidence shattered.
Today at 1 in the 2004 home opener at Beaver Field, the Lions (8-9) will have the chance to do what they couldn't do last year, take two games from the Big Red (3-10) and end the non-conference portion of the schedule in an upbeat, positive mood.
"It's huge for us to sweep Cornell," pitcher Aaron Tressler said. "We're expected to beat them and last year we took them to lightly. No way we can do that this time."
The Lions' mental state may be the big winner if they can come up with the sweep this afternoon. They are coming off the hardest of roadtrips, three straight losses in Miami, and they are staring down the barrel of another Big Ten season where wins come as easy as root canals.
Senior Jared Hopewell will start on the mound in game one and either juniors Josh Palm or Matt Carroll will start game two.
"I'm glad to be back at home," Hindelang said. "We've been outside on our own field exactly one time since Feb. 2. But we have to take care of business against Cornell. We know what they can do after last year. For us it's not about revenge, its about respect."
Respect is not the kind of word that has been thrown around during Cornell baseball discussions so far this year.
After starting the season 3-2, they have lost eight straight and had one especially rough trip to California earlier this month. On that two-week trip, they went 0-7, including a 31-3 loss to UC-Santa Barbara.
But right now, that doesn't matter. Penn State still needs to win both games today to push their record over the .500 mark.
And Cornell could have lost to UCSB 400-3 and that still wouldn't have changed the fact that they took two games from Penn State last year and embarrassed the Lions in the process.
"We knew that winning even a game against Miami would be tough, so right now we have to step it up," catcher Matt Harter said. "The guys here from last year realize that we need to take them seriously and we need to return the favor."
