In many ways, he's the most scrutinized player on the baseball diamond. When he emerges from the bullpen, he -- and the crowd -- knows that the game should essentially be over.

And when a victory hinges on his ability to get just three batters out, the closer has to block out all distractions.

Perhaps that's why sophomore Drew O'Neil has been knighted as Penn State's new late-inning specialist. Stone-faced and standing at an imposing 6-foot-4, the hard-throwing righty hopes to play the part as well as he looks it.

"There's always a lot more pressure when you come into the closer role," O'Neil said. "You also gotta have a really short memory. You go out and do bad one game, you can't bring that inside of the next game."

It's that type of mentality that allowed Penn State head coach Robbie Wine to trust the ball in O'Neil's hands in the Nittany Lions' biggest spot of the young season. In last Sunday's contest with Centenary, Penn State was nursing a 7-6 lead in the eighth inning when O'Neil got the call from the bullpen.

In his first appearance in a Lion uniform, O'Neil pitched two shutout innings, recording a pivotal strikeout with one out and two runners on base in the ninth, to preserve his team's first victory. And though he got a little bit roughed up, he buckled down and earned the save. It's what gives his coaching staff even more confidence in him.

"That was a pressure game right there. It was exactly what we expected out of him," Wine said. "I think he even pitched better against someone else out in those situations than in Holuba Hall here in intrasquad scrimmages. We got comments from the other coaches: 'Who's that guy?' "

Anyone who throws a split-fingered fastball like O'Neil is bound to turn some heads and intimidate hitters. The late break makes it almost impossible for a batter down in the count to lay off of the pitch, which begins up in the zone. It's a pitch that teammate Scott Gaffney, Wine and pitching coach Jason Bell have described as "nasty." It's the pitch that O'Neil turned to when caught in a sticky situation against Centenary.

It's a pitch that he almost wasn't throwing for the Lions.

As a promising freshman at Wake Forest in 2004, he was forced to take a medical redshirt after having Tommy John surgery to repair tendons in his pitching elbow. Once recovered, he transferred to Young Harris College in his home state of Georgia and helped his squad to a Georgia Junior College Athletic Association championship in his only season there. After that, he heard from Wine.

Now, at his third school in three seasons, O'Neil is surrounded with an entirely different atmosphere at Penn State.

"It's a different kind of place," O'Neil said. "My last school was real small, it was like 600 people in the school ... you hung out with the same 30 guys every weekend. Obviously, here, at a big school, there's so much more to it."

But O'Neil, as his closer position dictates, thrives off of adjusting to pressure situations.

"Drew's a guy that's gonna come in and compete," Bell said. "He comes in and a guy may hit a home run or he may strike out the side, and he's gonna be the same guy when he walks off the mound."