In five weeks or five months or five years, the game will be marked only by the ‘W’ in Syracuse’s record books. The score, the way it was played and the fact that the Orange slimly survived will become mere footnotes.

But for now, in the direct aftermath of Syracuse’s 40-34 double-overtime win over Wyoming on Saturday in front of 38,447 at the Carrier Dome, the Orange’s victory will be noted as the day heralded freshman running back Delone Carter flashed the moves and power that earned him Mr. Ohio as a high school senior.

Because on a day SU’s all-time leading rusher Joe Morris was honored, Carter had one of those ‘I was there when …’ games in just his fifth collegiate appearance.

He rushed 20 times for 129 yards and scored four touchdowns. All four scores – two in the second half, two in overtime – gave the Orange (3-2) a lead. His final touchdown, a 15-yard run in which he started toward the right sideline but cutback to the middle, ended a game Wyoming (1-4) sent to overtime with five seconds left in regulation.

Carter’s breakout day only takes a backseat to the significance for the SU program, which now holds its first winning record since December 2004 and first three-game winning streak since the 2002 season.

Now, Syracuse enters next week’s conference opener against Pittsburgh (4-1, 1-0 Big East) with a running back thrown into the same spotlight that shined on the great backs in school history. And those expectations aren’t media-generated, but rather come from within the locker room from the players who wear the same jersey as Carter every day.

‘He showed what he’s capable of doing,’ SU quarterback Perry Patterson said. ‘He’s going to be one of the great SU backs.’

Carter’s response?

‘That’s what I strive to be,’ Carter said. ‘I want to be great. I’m not going to say it’s here yet, but I’m going to do whatever I got to do to reach that.’

It was that swagger that helped Carter propel the Orange to the double-overtime win on a day when SU wasn’t particularly impressive.

The game was a statistical quandary: Wyoming accumulated 512 yards, SU only 275.

The Orange was turned inside out by Wyoming’s dink-and-dunk offense, based primarily on short screens spread horizontally to capitalize on the run-after-the-catch. The Cowboys’ misdirections misdirected SU. The scorebook suggested one result, the scoreboard another.

‘We did not play our game,’ SU head coach Greg Robinson said. ‘We did not play our defense. We had spurts. I wasn’t very happy; we did not play our best.’

But if a victory can be judged on how it’s obtained, the Orange certainly can’t walk away feeling like they embarrassed the Cowboys in the fashion it did Illinois on Sept. 16 and Miami (Ohio) on Sept. 23.

In fact, they can feel embarrassed that the game even went into overtime.

‘It’s more us, not them,’ said senior cornerback Tanard Jackson, who tallied a team-high nine tackles and recorded his second interception of the season. ‘If I had to say something, we had less focus today. We need to focus on every play. We had spurts to show we are a great defense, and then we had spurts that just wasn’t us, and we know that.’

Syracuse was simply outplayed for much of the game.

The game went to halftime tied at 10-10 and then 17-17 heading into the fourth quarter. But with every slip up – highlighted by Wyoming’s 92-yard touchdown drive in the game’s final four minutes that concluded with a 15-yard touchdown pass with five seconds left – SU was able to pull a rabbit out of its hat, never more than stopping the Cowboys on a fourth-and-inches in the second overtime.

But the best trick SU pulled was feeding Carter. The Orange’s starting running back, Curtis Brinkley, was having an ‘off game’ by his own admission – gaining only 32 yards on 11 carries along with two costly lost fumbles. Brinkley told his backup to carry them, to become a ‘big-time player.’

Carter did, rushing for 117 yards in the second half and overtime. But what’s more, he found the blue-and-orange end zone point four times, and marked the first chapter of what has the makings of a legendary SU career.

‘I was very hungry and I wanted to eat, and I ended up eating a lot today,’ Carter said. ‘And you can never be too full.’

Published on October 2, 2006 at 12:00 pm