Robbie Wine is used to early season trips to the South or long bus trips to the Midwest on the weekends -- but midweek road games are unfamiliar for the baseball coach.

At 3 p.m. today at Trees Field in Oakland, Penn State will square off against Pitt and will play its first midweek, non-conference road game since a May 2006 trip against Villanova in Plymouth Meeting.

That, coupled with this weekend's trip to Purdue, means the Nittany Lions will be out of the classroom for at least one-and-a-half days.

"Especially academically, you don't like to do that," Wine said.

"It's a grind going to the classroom, making up tests, making up class projects or whatever they miss. So we don't like doing that."

Wine said the home team has alternated yearly in the series and it was Pitt's turn to play the game at home -- necessitating the midweek road trip.

Next year, both teams will play one home game and road game against each other, Wine said.

But it still is a challenge for the Lions.

"Yeah, it's definitely difficult, especially when you're used to playing home midweek games," catcher Joe Blackburn said.

"It's just one of those things. We're used to traveling for them ... we're ready for it."

Penn State will be ready for a Pitt team that has struggled of late. The Panthers have lost five of their last six games going into today's game against the Lions.

Last weekend, the Panthers were swept by Seton Hall to fall to 2-7 in the Big East. And both the Lions and Pitt have nearly identical records -- Penn State has nine wins, Pitt has eight and both have 17 losses.

"They're similar to us," Wine said. "They have conference [games] on weekends and that's where all their pitching is."

Since a team's best pitchers are used on the weekends, midweek games force teams to use fifth and sixth starters.

But at this point of the season, the focus is on conference play and the non-conference record doesn't come into play.

"It's kind of like last weekend, we weren't overlooking Bucknell but we were really looking forward to [Michigan]," Blackburn said. "So we're not overlooking Pitt, but we're really looking forward to Purdue."

In that Bucknell game, freshman left-hander Calvin Grumley made his first career start.

Wine said Sunday that Grumley will likely make his second career start today.

As a starter, Grumley has pitched three scoreless innings.

But Wine wants the team to be backed by the offense that was present in Sunday's 10-1 win over Michigan.

"Hopefully it's a slugfest," he said, "at least on our end."