Injury Causes Yard to Miss Rest of Season : College basketball: Torn ligament in right knee sidelines center for Cal State Northridge.

Chris Yard, Cal State Northridge’s top rebounder and post player, will miss the remainder of the basketball season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

Dr. Lestor Cohn, Northridge’s team orthopedic specialist, discovered the tear during arthroscopic surgery Friday at Encino Hospital.

“It was just what we feared,” Cohn said. “That is exactly the type of thing that causes the knee to give out continuously.”

Yard, a senior from Las Vegas, has been a starter since joining the team last season after transferring from Lassen (Calif.) College. The 6-foot-6 forward was averaging 5.9 rebounds and 12.3 points a game.

The Matadors will start either Shane O’Doherty, a 6-11 junior, or Brent Lofton, a 6-5 senior, in Yard’s place tonight against Northeastern Illinois in Chicago.

Yard incurred what was thought to be a sprained right knee during the first half of a game against UC Irvine on Jan. 8. He went on to complete that game, finishing with 14 points and 11 rebounds as Northridge upset the Anteaters, 68-66, in Irvine.

After sitting out a Jan. 11 game at St. Mary’s, Yard returned to the lineup against Colorado on Jan. 17 in Boulder. He lasted only one minute 12 seconds before his knee gave out again.

He was pulled from the game and did not play again.

Yard’s health problems were compounded Wednesday when he slipped while climbing stairs and broke his right hand trying to cushion his fall.

Cohn set the break with a plate on screws after he finished working on Yard’s knee. The hand, Cohn said, “was markedly displaced and unstable.”

“Any one of the two injuries probably would have ended his season,” Cohn added.