Following a four-game stretch where its offense produced a total of seven runs, the Penn State baseball team looked as if it was finally starting to show some life during its at-bats.

But after taking little time to build a five-run lead and chase Bucknell starting pitcher Andrew Clarke after just 2 1/3 innings, the Nittany Lions could not maintain the momentum and continued to struggle with the bat in their hands.

"The whole offense needs to relax a little bit," Penn State head coach Robbie Wine said. "This wasn't that much of a relaxing game."

Instead of putting the game on ice, the Lions suffered through a cold streak at home plate that allowed the feisty Bison to battle back and nearly pull off the upset against their intrastate rivals last night at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.

"We talked about 'just breathe, get up there and relax,' " Wine said. "I think it happened for a couple innings, and we're going to talk about what happened after that.

"Did we try and hit the five-run home run with nobody on or did we stick with our approach?"

It appeared that the Lions had done enough after just three innings to put everything in cruise control and relax for the rest of the game.

Thanks to a Bucknell error in the bottom of the second inning, junior catcher Joe Blackburn and junior catcher/designated hitter Robert Yodice scored to kick-start the Penn State offense.

A quartet of Lions scored in the very next inning to seemingly put the game out of reach.

Through the first three innings, Penn State made the most of its trips to the plate - wracking up six runs and seven hits, and leaving only two runners on base.

"We did what we need to do in the beginning of the game, got out to an early lead," senior infielder Matt Cavagnaro said. "But when we get out to an early lead, we just need to keep going and just give up at-bat, which we seem to do a little bit."

A quick start was replaced by a much different story for the rest of the game. The Lions mustered only five hits and scored no runs, all while stranding two potential runs on base over the final five innings.

In contrast, Bucknell managed to get its offense going against several Penn State pitchers and scrapped together four runs to make the game much more interesting than it should have been.

"When we get out to an early lead, we just need to keep going," Cavagnaro said, "and just give up at-bat, which we seem to do a little bit."