With Dak Prescott leaving Starkville, Mississippi State has been left with a gaping hole at the quarterback position. In that spirit, two-sport Bulldog has decided to slice his athletic commitments in half in the hopes that he can be the one to fill it.
On Twitter earlier this week, Elijah Staley announced that he has decided to quit the MSU basketball team in order to focus all of his attention on football. Staley, a redshirt freshman, joined Ben Howland‘s hoops program following the end of the football regular season in late November and had played in two games (eight minutes of action total) thus far in the 2015-16 season.
Staley practiced with the basketball team during the 2014-15 season as well but never saw any court time in a game.
#HailState pic.twitter.com/BACLF2QKuU
— Elijah Staley (@ES14_) January 18, 2016
“I’m appreciative of his efforts and how he helped us in practice,” Howland said in a statement. “He really wants to battle for that starting position at quarterback. We wish him well and appreciate his contributions while he was a part of the team.”
Along with Nick Fitzgerald, MSU’s primary backup in 2015, Staley will likely enter spring practice as one of the front-runners to replace Prescott. Nick Tiano and Damian Williams will also be a part of what will initially be a five-man quarterback battle that head coach Dan Mullen hopes to have significantly pared down by the end of spring.
Staley was a three-star member of MSU’s 2014 recruiting class -- Fitzgerald was a two-star that same class, Tiano and Williams three-stars in 2015 -- who sat out as a true freshman and took a redshirt for that season. He played in two games this past season, completing 3-of-5 passes for 51 yards and a touchdown. The scoring toss came in a Week 3 blowout of FCS Northwestern State.
