At this point Robbie Wine could probably save a lot of his energy at the team's weekly meetings by popping in a tape of the 1988 film, Bull Durham.

With the Penn State baseball team (4-13) struggling mightily at this point to put some wins together, the scene where the manager berates his 8-16 club is equally applicable, even though the fictional club was having twice as much success in terms of victories.

Wondering how the team won eight games, the movie manager says "This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball."

At this juncture in the season, Penn State could easily have eight wins had it not been for its failure to execute the team's fundamentals for nine innings. The Nittany Lions are 3-8 in games decided by two runs or less. Penn State committed 14 errors in those games, putting the pitchers on the mound an extra 4 2/3 innings.

"It's nice to see that each day we come out expecting to win no matter what happens the day before, so that's always good," Penn State ace Alan Stidfole said.

Stidfole has been a stalwart on the mound, but a lot has gone wrong for his protégés. Statistics show a walked lead off man scores 70-percent of the time, a malady afflicting Penn State several times over the course of the weekend series against Furman. The Lions hit rock bottom in the second game of Saturday's double header.

Penn State pitcher Aaron Markowitz balked after allowing a lead-off bunt single and a throwing error by first baseman Cory Wine on the ensuing play put runners on first and second with nobody out. Markowitz attempted to stop his motion during the at-bat of the next Furman hitter, thinking the hitter called time. He wound up spiking the ball into the ground and the runners moved to second and third, serving as a catalyst for a seven-run sixth. Later on, Furman generated a run without having to swing the bat.

"Shoot, it sets the tone for the inning. Walks, steals, the error and the wild pitch," Penn State pitching coach Jason Bell said.

On offense, they've had trouble manufacturing runs. The Lions continually mount threats, but stranding runners killed a number of potential rallies. In the second inning of a scoreless game on Sunday, the Lions left the bases loaded, just as they had a day earlier, trailing 7-3 in the top of the seventh inning immediately following the lapses in the field.

"When you go back and evaluate the team's performance, you can't pinpoint anything," Wine said. "The pitching staff has done a good job but not good enough. Our baserunning has done a good job of taking extra bases but not good enough. We're getting picked off... It's all around everything. Yeah, we're getting our hits but we're not scoring runs."

Part of Penn State's shortcomings come from the failure of the coaching staff to instill a sense of urgency in this team despite the prevalent problems plaguing it. At the team meeting last Tuesday, Wine emphasized the need to relax while trying to come back with a win against a top-64 club.

"We talked, and are our backs against the wall? No. Is there a red flag? No. We're not doing that," Wine said. "We're just going through our spring training."

That came before the weekend against Furman and after losing 3-of-8 during Spring Break. It came two weeks after Wine said "the time for not winning is over."

With Tuesday's home opener against Bucknell wiped out because of temperatures predicted to hover around the freezing mark, the next time to win remains to be seen. The exhibition schedule has just one series left -- a three game series against No. 19 Arizona State this weekend.

With a week and a half left before the start of Big Ten play, this team, with aspirations of winning the conference, has gathered little momentum during a March schedule that could be categorized as "just above average." Given the caliber of the Sun Devil club, the complacency has to change in this week's practice. This team needs to hear a decisive message that this play is unacceptable, if not from the staff, then Hollywood.