Kansas quarterback Ryan Willis (13) looks to throw down field during the first quarter on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015 at Darrell K. Royal Stadium in Austin, Texas.

Bruised and battered but far from out, freshman quarterback Ryan Willis, injuries and all, is on pace to start Saturday at TCU.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s gonna play,” Kansas University offensive coordinator Rob Likens said at Tuesday’s media session. “Groins and things like that recover pretty quickly. We just gotta take care of him this week in practice, but I think he’ll be fine.”

While that certainly qualifies as good news for a Kansas team that finished last week’s loss at Texas with red-shirt freshman Keaton Perry under center, Likens and head coach David Beaty said they would spend a bigger portion of this week making sure Perry and fellow back-up T.J. Millweard were well schooled on this week’s game plan in case Willis’ strained groins force him to the bench again.

“You’ve got to get them ready,” Beaty said. “The thing that you get a little bit of an advantage for is that you do know that Ryan is a little bit banged up. So as you go into planning, you know you have to have your Perry plan, you have to have your T.J. plan, and you have to be able to rep all those things and get them where they’re (effective) in the ballgame.”

Despite how it reads on the depth chart, where Millweard is listed ahead of Perry, Beaty said the two back-ups really were co-second-stringers this week.

If either player gets into the game Saturday, it would mark the second time this season that KU was forced to turn to a QB who opened the season not listed on the depth chart. Beaty and Likens joked that things have gotten so bad that both of their names might start appearing under the QB slot on KU’s depth chart.

“He’s got more reps at quarterback than I do so I’m gonna put coach Beaty in,” Likens joked. “It’s been one of those years. … I’m starting to get numb to some of the stuff.”

Cozart done for 2015

Beaty opened Tuesday’s meeting with the local media by revealing that he had just hung up the phone after a conversation with quarterback Montell Cozart that provided a clear answer about when the injured QB would return — 2016.

“He is going to undergo surgery (today) for that shoulder,” Beaty said of the junior who started the season under center for the second year in a row. “It just isn’t responding like we thought it would, so we’re going to go ahead and get it fixed, which will get him healthy for next season and be able to kind of move forward instead of that thing continuing to linger.”

Before being knocked out of the Iowa State loss, Cozart played in five games — starting four — and finished 2015 with 752 yards and two touchdowns on 66-of-105 passing with one interception. He also chipped in 113 yards and a TD on 45 rush attempts.

In other injury news, Beaty said left tackle Jordan Shelley-Smith was still working his way back from a concussion issue, and guard Bryan Peters likely would miss the TCU game because of an elbow injury he suffered last week during pregame.

Missouri impact

Beaty was asked Tuesday if he had spoken to his team about the situation at Missouri, where the MU football team joined in and brought greater visibility to a strike by the student body designed to force the resignation of MU president Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin over a lack of sensitivity and response to several racial incidents on campus. Beaty expressed his belief that what happened at Missouri was something from which people from all walks of life could learn.

“I have not yet,” Beaty said Tuesday. “But this is certainly going to be a great opportunity for us to do so. We do a ton of training with our guys. We think one of the most powerful things you can do for your players when they become student-athletes is to educate them on the things that could come in front of them. The things they’re going to see and how they might best react when they come across those things. It’s a fairly new story, but what a great opportunity for us to really talk to our guys about celebrating diversity and the things that come along with that. It’s just another one of those things that our kids are being exposed to, and we need to be able to educate them on how to handle things.

“The big message for me is going to be the example set by our administration and our chancellor. They do a tremendous job of communicating. We communicate so well on this campus, and we encourage everyone in our facility to communicate, talk to one another, have open dialogue. We prove that every day by making sure those doors are open on that first floor. It is a very friendly place. We recommend daily, ‘Come see us, get to know us.’ We want to know more than just the football players.”