Hit totals gradually spiraled downward for the Nittany Lions baseball team over the over first three losses of its four game series in Austin, Texas.
On Sunday afternoon, the Lions hits plummeted to 0, as the Texas Longhorns, the No. 7 team in National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association polls, no-hit the Lions on their way to a 9-0 win and a four game sweep over Penn State.
"It was a tough weekend," Penn State head coach Robbie Wine said. "As far as what we did, I wasn't very happy."
The Lions offense that failed to garner a hit in the final game of the four game series saw it's offensive totals drop in each contest.
In game one, the Lions collected nine hits while being routed, 9-2. In game two, the team hit safely six times in a 6-2 loss, and in game three, Penn State was shutout, 1-0, while acquiring five hits.
Finally, in the series finale, Texas pitcher Brandon Workman secured a no hitter.
"He was pitching big leagues, and I'm not kidding you," Wine said. "He had four pitches, he was hitting his spots."
The no-hitter was also the second game in a row Penn State failed to cross home plate.
With a combination of a hard slider and a menacing fastball, Workman faced the minimum 27 batters Sunday afternoon.
"The guy just went up with his game and threw well," Lions first baseman Cory Wine said. "There's no doubt everyone on our team was trying 100 percent, we just weren't clicking."
Issues connecting bat to ball also thwarted Penn State pitcher T.J. Macy's complete game, a day earlier in the third game of the series.
Macy allowed just one run, struck out seven and gave up only five hits in eight innings of work, but received the loss when his team failed to score any runs.
"It's not a problem. [The hitters] are going to come around, I have no doubt about that," Macy said. "They're going to pick me up sometimes, I'm going to pick them up sometimes."
While problems at the plate doomed the Lions on the scoreboard all weekend, problems both before the game and in the field did not help matters.
Penn State's coach said, before the game, the team was delayed arriving to Texas' diamond. Once there, the Lions squad that has grown accustomed to chasing fly balls in no-wind conditions during indoor practices had to deal with blinding sun and 30-50 mph wind gusts.
But Wine refused to make excuses for his team's performance over the weekend.
"A good baseball team will take advantage of your mistakes, and that's what they did," the coach said.
Overall, while the contests remained mostly one sided, the Lions felt they were "right there with [Texas]," as Macy put it, and maybe just one fluke inning away from "one-run ball games all weekend."
"We played four games against one of the top teams in the country," coach Wine said. "Overall, I thought it was a great learning experience for us."
