It may have taken nearly two years, but Seth Whitehill knows he belongs on the Penn State baseball team.

The sophomore pitcher, who was cut by head coach Robbie Wine during walk-on tryouts in fall 2004, took the mound Saturday as the starter for the Nittany Lions when they faced Michigan State.

The 6-foot-1 right-hander admits he was a little nervous for his first ever Big Ten start, but was comforted by remembering the recipe that had brought him to the starting rotation after not being recruited: "Throw strikes, work the zone, make sure you get ground balls or weak fly balls, get people out."

Wine admits he didn't know who Whitehill was when he cut him at tryouts two fall seasons ago. As a first-year coach, Wine was busy enough trying to learn names of the players that were already on the roster.

Whitehill was a college freshman, attending Penn State like he always envisioned he would do while growing up in nearby Bellefonte. He was a former pitcher for Bellefonte Area High School, leading his team to the PIAA class AA quarterfinals in his senior season. He was also unrecruited by any college program but was determined to be in a Penn State uniform by the time tryouts were over.

Instead, Whitehill was cut unceremoniously, and decided to join the club baseball team.

"I just wanted to keep playing ball," he said.

Whitehill continued to play after the club team finished its season, this time for Bellefonte Legion, a county team. This past summer, Whitehill took the mound against State College Legion in the regional championship at State College. A familiar face, to him, was in the crowd -- Robbie Wine was watching his son Cory, play first base for State College.

The coach had no idea he had cut the pitcher he saw on the mound that day, but he knew he liked how the Bellefonte pitcher was deceiving the hitters on his son's team despite no apparent overpowering pitch. He now wanted to know who Whitehill was, so he could recommend that he try out for Penn State that fall.

Armed with a new confidence, Whitehill made the team and joined it for fall practices. The scene he had envisioned in his mind was now a reality.

"My goal was to walk on to this team. Period," he said.

So there he was Saturday, pitching for the university that he had dreamt of attending, against a Big Ten team, Michigan State, that was learning who Whitehill was while watching him throw pitches in warm-ups.

The pitches the Spartans saw weren't anything special. In fact, Whitehill throws many of them -- fastballs and sliders -- where opposing hitters can actually hit them. He throws strikes early and often. That's his game plan.

"Every time he's out on the mound we know what we're going to get," Penn State pitching coach Jason Bell said.

"The kid goes after guys. He's not going to strikeout 10. On the other side, he's not going to walk five. He's going to get after guys, have the ball put in play, and the defense is going to be ready."

After throwing Whitehill on the mound for consecutive starts against Pittsburgh and Duquesne, the Penn State coaching staff was impressed enough to give the sophomore a shot in the starting rotation. Saturday, he went eight innings, throwing 98 pitches, allowing 11 hits, but giving the Lions a realistic opportunity to win the game that they would end up losing in the ninth.

"It was exactly what we wanted," Robbie Wine said of Whitehill's performance. "He's going to give up some hits, he's going to give up some runs, but our offense has to be good enough to stay with him."

So what gives the Penn State coaches confidence to insert an unproven, un-recruited pitcher into a Division I starting rotation?

"When guys hit him, they just miss hit a lot of balls. There's something about the way he pitches. He hides the ball a little bit. He changes speeds," Bell said. "He's not going to throw 95 miles per hour and blow guys away. But on the other side, he's going to pitch. He's going to keep us in ball games. He's going to go deep into a game, and he's going to give us a chance to win."

Wine's theory isn't as concrete: "I don't know what it is. Hitters don't take good swings on him. Whether it's his slider, fastball, or tough to see the ball, I don't know. It's a mystery. But he did it all fall, too, and he deserves a chance."

Whitehill is a living second chance. That's why when he talks about how great it feels to be a player on the Penn State baseball team, he speaks knowing equally how it feels to be on campus and not be on the team.

"It's great," he said after Saturday's game, despite earning the loss. "It really is. Confidence-wise, I feel so much better. I love being a part of this. It's so much fun."

And he doesn't plan on changing his pitching methods anytime soon because it's his own style that got him on the mound Saturday in the first place.

"You get here, and they don't want you to change," Whitehill said. "You're here for a reason."