If you ever wanted to find a sporting event filled with all-too-familiar clichés and contrived imagery, look no further than the UA baseball team’s 8-3 loss to No. 16 Oregon State on Saturday.

With gloomy clouds blanketing the Tucson sky and struggling freshman Donn Roach (1-4, 8.68 ERA) on the mound, the Wildcats (14-16, 3-9 Pacific 10 Conference) had to play a near-flawless game to earn the win and steal their first series of the Pac-10 season.

Surprisingly, the rain held off in the first inning and Roach kept Oregon State (20-7, 7-2 Pac-10) off the scoreboard.

Then in the second, with the game tied at zero, the skies opened up – both literally and figuratively.

Roach walked the first batter, and as the rain started to get heavier, he walked the second batter and then gave up a bunt single to designated hitter Adalberto Santos to load the bases.

After back-to-back RBI groundouts, shortstop Joey Wong ripped a single to right field, scoring two.

That was all Oregon State needed.

“”Not a good starting performance,”” said UA head coach Andy Lopez. “”That’s about it.””

Roach’s struggles were just another addition to the laundry list of problems that the Wildcats have had with their starting rotation; but to his credit, Roach and the rest of the staff didn’t receive much help offensively.

Arizona scored three runs in the second inning but was unable to put together any sort of continuity after that, thanks to a dominating performance from Oregon State’s Jorge Reyes.

Despite losing the game by five runs, catcher Dwight Childs blames losing the weekend series on the team’s habit of playing seven or eight good innings, but letting one or two bad innings get in the way of success.

“”Thursday night we exploded in one inning, but they did the same. Then on Friday it happened again and (Saturday) it happened again,”” the junior said. “”There’s always one inning where one team blows up, and unfortunately we’ve been on that side a couple of times.””

No matter where the bad inning comes from – poor pitching, errors, inconsistent hitting or even the rain – the Wildcats know they have to improve on all facets of the game if they want to snap out of their 3-9 conference skid.

“”This is no fun,”” Lopez said. “”We have to change it.””