Designated hitter Josh Spiegel looked locked in Sunday evening.

After Penn State dropped both games in a doubleheader to Indiana on Sunday, Spiegel sat in the player’s lounge staring at the ground, looking up only to answer questions from the media. In between speaking, he stared off into space, weighing the events of the day.

In the first game, Penn State went down 4-0 in the second inning. The Nittany Lions lost 4-1 despite reliever Steven Miller putting on a show from the mound. Ultimately, Penn State couldn’t generate enough offense to come back.

In the second game, the Nittany Lions went down 4-0, brought the score to 6-4, and then lost 22-11. They gave up eight runs in the ninth inning alone.

Despite the losses, Spiegel had a good showing. He went up to bat seven times and reached base all but once. In the second game of the doubleheader, he recorded four RBIs. Still, Spiegel was down after the game.

“[We] just have to get better. I’m just disappointed,” he said. “[We had a] chance to win that game and gave it away.”

After a brutal weekend full of weather issues and poor play on the field, Penn State doesn’t have much time to recover. It’s back in action on Tuesday, April 4, to face Bucknell at home.

Somehow, the Nittany Lions will have to bounce back just two days after a demoralizing Sunday doubleheader.

“It’s tough to say how we’re gonna do it, but we just have to do it,” Spiegel said.

Penn State head coach Rob Cooper is in an interesting position. His team lost one game because it couldn’t generate enough offense and another because of issues in other aspects of the game. Across the past five losses, Cooper feels that the team simply hasn’t set itself up for success.

“If you look at three of those games, we haven’t given ourselves a chance,” he said. “We have to do better, and they know that.”

Penn State’s pitching also needs some improvement. While Miller had a good performance on Sunday, he spoke for his fellow pitchers when he said they knew they needed to be better.

“One of the big things we’ve talked about is just finishing this game, and then we’re coming back Tuesday,” Miller said. “Nothing from today ends up on Tuesday… [It’s a] totally new day for pitchers.”

With Bucknell on the horizon and Delaware State afterward, Penn State has some time before it plays a conference opponent again. It will face Purdue on the road from April 14 to 16, though who the Nittany Lions face isn’t really important to Cooper.

“We have to prepare the way we would, regardless of who it is. And I know that’s coach speak and it’s very vanilla, but that’s the honest-to-goodness truth,” Cooper said. “We have to play better baseball. We have to get better.”

Cooper isn’t sure how long it will take his team to bounce back. But, he does know what he’s looking for from the team’s mindset.

“Have some pride,” he said. “We have good kids, we have good players. You got to have some pride.”