Wednesday, April 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
UNLV may have lost its exhibition game with the Las Vegas Stars, but Rebels head coach Fred Dallimore left Cashman Field with a big grin on his face.
Tuesday's 6-1 loss to the Stars marked the first appearance on the mound this season by junior right-hander Nate Yeskie. Yeskie started the exhibition game and allowed two runs (one earned) on five hits, walked one and struck out three in 3 2/3 innings.
By all accounts, it was a successful outing for Yeskie, who underwent arthroscopic shoulder surgery last month.
"I felt pretty good," Yeskie said. "A couple of times I tried to cut loose and I think I got out of what I was trying to accomplish out there, and that was just going out and throwing strikes and working on my game.
"For what I did, I was more impressed with what I got out of myself than what I had expected to get. My changeup, which is usually my worst pitch out of the four, seemed to be my best tonight. I don't feel that my velocity was where I wanted it to be tonight, but that's going to come."
Stars pitching coach Galen Cisco, who spent the past seven years as the Toronto Blue Jays' pitching coach, was impressed with what he saw from Yeskie.
"I was impressed with his off-speed stuff, his breaking ball and his changeup, to get it over as well as he did," Cisco said. "He did a good job changing speeds and getting the ball over the plate. He made some good pitches.
"He had a lot of poise out there. He did a good job of holding the runners on with men on base and he looked like he knew what was going on around him at all times."
Yeskie said he will wait until later in the week before he decides whether he will pitch Saturday against Big West Conference rival Long Beach State.
"The thing is, if everything feels right I'll give it the green light Saturday," said Yeskie, an 11-game winner last season and a potential high draft pick in June. "If not, I'll wait until Tuesday (when the Rebels host Loyola Marymount).
"I have to think about my future. This team is good enough to win without me -- they have proven that."
The Rebels, forced to exchange their aluminum bats for the wooden variety Tuesday night, could manage only a run on six hits -- all singles -- against eight Stars pitchers.
Las Vegas got a gift run in the first inning as Doug Dascenzo reached on an infield error and eventually scored on Jason Thompson's two-out single.
The Stars added a single run in the third on Dascenzo's sacrifice fly to take a 2-0 lead, but the Rebels cut it to 2-1 on Chris Adolph's sacrifice fly in the fifth.
Las Vegas got the run back in the bottom of the fifth on a leadoff double by Homer Bush and a one-out single by Luis Lopez. The Stars scored three times in the eighth against UNLV reliever Rob Luce on RBI doubles by Craig Colbert and Mike Sharperson and a run-scoring single by Paul Russo.
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