You hate to put an entire baseball team on one guy’s shoulders — especially when the one supporting his throwing arm has been cut into twice.

And it wouldn’t be fair, anyway.

So, never mind cloning mice or the athletic director. The University of Hawaii needs as many copies of Jarrett Arakawa as it can produce, ASAP.

On Sunday a masterpiece by the original was wasted in a 6-3 series-ending loss to Oklahoma.

UH was in command until the senior lefty had to leave the game after five innings of two-hit, shutout ball.

Arakawa looked like he could toy with the Sooners all day, but he’s coming back from a second surgery for a torn labrum and he had gone two over the agreed-upon 50-pitch count.

And what a marvelous 52 pitches they were.

"I felt pretty good today, but nowhere near 100 percent," he said.

As easy as Arakawa made it look to throw strikes and get ahead of the Oklahoma hitters and keep them guessing, every pitch was accompanied by pain. He won’t say it or even show it, but his coach, Mike Trapasso, knows, as he pitched coming back from the same injury himself.

Also, Arakawa’s "Maddux-esque" mastery (which Trapasso said, but many of us in the park were also thinking) made what happened after he left the game with a 1-0 lead all the more frustrating.

Five walks that seemed like 15, combined with defensive lapses, let the Sooners score six runs in the final three frames with hardly anything hit out of the infield.

And, then, as this team has done several times this season, the Rainbow bats woke up late but too late. Just enough to get the Murakami Stadium faithful excited and hopeful for a miracle ninth-inning rally.

It’s things like that making this team hard to figure out 20 games into the season. They’re young, so you hope they learn from mistakes, hope they go two steps forward and one step back — and especially not two balls first and two walks first.

Because that’s the biggest key to it, especially at this pitcher’s park. Get ahead in the count like Arakawa does — even if your fastball is topping out at 83 mph, keep it down and over the plate and let the stadium and the defense do the work for you.

That second ally hasn’t been too consistent for UH pitchers recently, including seven errors in this four-game series that Oklahoma won 3-1.

But while Arakawa was pitching Sunday the defense did fine. It’s not a coincidence that fielders falter more often when the count goes deep.

Young pitchers often try to throw too hard, and that’s when they lose their control.

"They have to learn that the 87-90 mph they threw by guys in JC doesn’t work here," Trapasso said. "If it’s not a strike they won’t swing, if it is they’ll hit it hard. … The hardest guys to hit are the ones who throw over 90 or under 80."

The young UH pitchers got a perfect example of how to win for the first five innings Sunday. The more they forget about the radar gun in favor of the strike zone the more effective they will be.

Reach Star-Advertiser sports columnist Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com, his "Quick Reads" blog at staradvertiser.com and twitter.com/davereardon.