After opening its season last weekend by dropping three of its five games in the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, most of the details associated with those games are ones the No. 9 Arizona softball team would certainly like to forget.

With Arizona still trying to figure out the odds and ends to a successful lineup, the Wildcats are looking for lessons that would surely be worthwhile to remember.

The team will

get the opportunity to move forward in its second consecutive weekend tournament with five games when they travel to Cathedral City, Calif., for the Palm Springs Classic this weekend.

“”My overall assessment of (last weekend) is we have a tremendous ways to go,”” said interim head coach Larry Ray. “”I think the pieces are there, but we are just going to have make sure they fit together. (Last weekend) they didn’t. Everyone wasn’t on the same page and it is our job as a coaching staff to get everyone on the same page.””

Despite the different scenery, the competition in the Palm Springs Classic may be as stiff as last weekend, if not more. The Wildcats play San Diego State and No. 10 Baylor today, Massachusetts and Long Island Saturday, and cap off the weekend against No. 6 LSU Sunday.

In order for the Wildcats to earn a weekend sweep – especially against two top-10 opponents in Baylor and LSU – they will unquestionably need to shore up their pitching.

Ace pitcher Taryne Mowatt started off her season by getting shelled for eight runs by then-No. 7 Northwestern. Though she did rebound by yielding only one run to Nevada and gained her first victory over Southern Utah, Mowatt was sure she never wanted to experience struggles like her outing against Northwestern again.

“”I think as a team we kind of need to make adjustments, both in the field and at bat,”” Mowatt said. “”(The Northwestern game) kind of threw me back. I don’t remember that ever happening to me, but it was the first game of the season and I hadn’t been in a game situation in a very long , but I learned from it and I am looking forward to moving forward.””

This season, the Wildcats have also struggled immensely with turning their many opportunities into runs, as they made it a habit of stranding runners on base.

It was particularly a problem in the 1-0 loss to Nevada on Sunday when Mowatt threw a two-hitter, but the Wildcats couldn’t provide any run support as they stranded 12 base runners. Left fielder Brittany Lastrapes led off the seventh inning for the Wildcats with a double against the Wolfpack and the Wildcats eventually loaded the bases, but were unable to tie the game or bring in the winning run.

“”We need to work on our hitting and actually giving Taryne some runs to work with,”” said Laine Roth, who is batting .286 with a homerun and three RBI’s through the first five games. “”It was very frustrating (last weekend) because we just weren’t getting the timely hits that we needed, so we just have to work on that.””