AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas quarterback David Ash met the media Monday, his injured left wrist lightly wrapped, and declared himself fit to play against Baylor on Saturday.
The baseball-sized knot that sprung up in his wrist during Saturday's loss to Oklahoma was no longer visible. Ash looked much more optimistic about his immediate playing future than the uncertainty he wore on his face at the Cotton Bowl.
"Yeah, I will play," said Ash, whose 25th-ranked Longhorns will host Baylor.
Ash was injured when he took a direct helmet-to-wrist hit while attempting a pass with 9:43 left in Texas' 63-21 drubbing to the Sooners. He was replaced by Case McCoy, who went 5-of-8 for 102 yards and two touchdowns against largely second- and third-team Oklahoma defenders.
The odds of McCoy seeing Baylor's first team as the starting quarterback in Austin seemed high given what Ash's wrist looked like before it was covered by a towel on the sideline.
"When it hit in the game I was just like, 'Shoot, that kind of hurt,'" Ash said. "I was running off and sat down and looked at it and went, 'Oh shoot.' Everybody started freaking out."
Ash thought his wrist was broken.
"That was the initial thought, that I had cracked it," he said. An X-ray showed that there was not a fracture.
"It definitely looks worse than it is," Ash said.
Ash said he practiced on Sunday, that he has taken snaps and that he could "handle a football."
Prior to the injury, Ash, like most who play on Texas' offense, wasn't doing much of anything against Oklahoma. He was 13-of-29 for 113 yards and two interceptions.
"I did not play as well as I could have," Ash said. "There were a lot of plays that I could have made that I didn't. I thought my poorest job was getting my team ready to play. I didn't do a good job of that."
It was easily the worst game of the season for a player who has quickly transitioned from question mark to not even a question on Texas' offense. Ash had thrown for an average of 300 yards per game in the three games previous to Oklahoma.
He hinted that some complacency might have set in on the offensive side, given its point production over the previous three weeks.
"I feel like there are a lot of things that we had gotten rolling and I thought they were going to keep going that way," Ash said. "We didn't pay attention to them as much, as much as I should have."
But those are things that he insists he'll home in on this week as the Longhorns try to put a third straight loss to Oklahoma behind them.