Baylor QB Dane King To Miss Remainder Of Season
10/27/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 27, 2004
Baylor junior quarterback Dane King (Gonzales, Texas) will be sidelined for the remainder of the 2004 season with a broken right hand sustained in the Iowa State game, Bears' coach Guy Morriss said Wednesday following his squad's rain-shortened practice in Floyd Casey Stadium. The second-year coach also tabbed sophomore Shawn Bell as his starter for Saturday's 6:05 p.m. game against No. 16 Texas A&M in Waco.
"Dane will have his hand pinned tomorrow and will be out for the remainder of the season," Morriss said. "We are disappointed to lose Dane because he was really starting to get comfortable with our offense the last two weeks, but at the same time we have every confidence in Shawn Bell and Terrance Parks. We'll turn them loose and see what happens.
"It will be a good opportunity for both of them, however, it is unfortunate that it has come about because of injury, but that is the nature of the beast," he added. "Injuries are a part of the game."
According to Baylor's athletic medicine staff, King will undergo surgery Thursday morning at Hillcrest Hospital and be sidelined between 4 and 6 weeks.
King had started 2-5 Baylor's first seven games of the season and had completed 131-of-222 passes for 1,370 yards and 9 touchdowns with 10 interceptions. His 59.0 percent completion percentage ranks as the second-best one-year mark in school history behind senior Aaron Karas' 59.8 percent performance in 2002, while King's 131 pass completions rank No. 9 on BU's single-season chart. He was coming off a career-high 289-yard performance against Iowa State which included a school-record-tying 29 completions on 37 attempts.
A China Spring, Texas, native, Bell will make his third career start against a nationally-ranked opponent this week, as he drew starts at No. 1 Oklahoma and against No. 24 Oklahoma State as a redshirt freshman in 2003. He has appeared in six of Baylor's seven games this season, completing 72.2 percent of his passes (26-of-36) for 189 yards and 2 touchdowns with no interceptions.
Karas, a fifth-year senior from Spring, Texas, who stands third on the Baylor depth chart, has not played in a game this season and the Iowa State game with pain in his right leg. He had an MRI Wednesday to determine the source of his leg pain, and his availability for Saturday's game against the Aggies is also in question, Morriss said.
Parks, a redshirt freshman from Lufkin, Texas, has taken some snaps at quarterback this season while also seeing action at wide receiver. He will go into the Texas A&M game listed second on the BU depth chart, according to Morriss.
