For 118 seconds the Carrier Dome fell quiet. With 10 minutes left in the first quarter, Syracuse football running back Walter Reyes lay motionless on the turf. He looked in pain. The outlook for the Orangemen looked even worse.

The trepidation was short lived, as Reyes reappeared one minute into the second half. When he entered, the Superman theme played on the speakers in the Dome.

‘I was just praying that it wasn’t that bad,’ Reyes said. ”Lord, please don’t let anything be torn, let me back out there.”

Five minutes into the game, Reyes rushed left. WVU cornerback Lance Frazier took out his legs and hit the outside of his knee. Reyes fumbled the ball because of the intense pain, he said. When the training staff X-rayed him at halftime, it determined the injury was just a bruise and cleared Reyes to play in the second half.

Running backs coach David Walker said Reyes looked a little gimpy, but was fine after that. With 6:13 left in the game, Reyes ripped off a 63-yard touchdown on a screen pass in which he showed no ill effects of the injury.

Freshman running back Tim Washington spelled Reyes for the rest of the first half after the injury. He ran for 39 yards on nine carries. With sophomore Damien Rhodes out with a left ankle injury, the running attack fell on the shoulders of the third-string Washington.

When Reyes went down, the injury appeared worse than it actually was. After two minutes on the ground, he was helped off the field by two trainers, putting no weight on his left leg.

‘That’s my dog,’ quarterback R.J. Anderson said. ‘I was just nervous. At first, I don’t want to say this, but it looked like a Willis McGahee-type injury.’

Said Reyes: ‘Everything goes through your head. What I live and die for is football. To take that away from me, it would be devastating.

‘Luckily it was just a real bad bruise.’

Halftime confusion

Following a Collin Barber field goal, Brendan Carney kicked off to West Virginia with 11 seconds left in the second quarter. His squib kick bounced through the hands of Adam Jones and into the endzone. Jones picked the ball up in the endzone and tried to avoid getting tackled, but he was brought down by a gang of Orangemen.

Fans and SU coaches screamed for a safety, but the referees awarded a touchback. They ruled the play a muffed return, in which case if a player gains possession in the endzone, it’s not a safety. If, however, Jones had gained possession out of the endzone and ran back in, then, the Orangemen could have brought him down for a safety.

‘Initially, you couldn’t tell when he gained possession of the ball,’ Walker said. ‘Once you watch the replay he clearly fielded the ball in the endzone. It was the right call by the officials.’

Loose Gator

It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ for freshman punt returner Marcus Clayton, it was a matter of ‘when.’ When Clayton returned a punt for a touchdown Saturday two minutes into the second quarter, he answered the question.

Clayton took a Todd James punt 56-yards for his first-career touchdown. After the score, teammates mobbed him on the sideline.

‘I faked like I was going up the middle,’ Clayton said, ‘then stuck them to the right, and went back to my left where my block was. I saw the kicker coming after me. I cut back in and walked to the endzone.’

But Clayton didn’t as much walk, as burn by the Mountaineers. Clayton is one of the fastest players on Syracuse, and once he rounded the left corner he put on the jets. This season, Clayton has 24 returns for 257 yards including Saturday’s touchdown.

This and that

Reyes was not among the eight semi-finalists for the Doak Walker Award (best running back) announced Wednesday. Boston College’s Derrick Knight, Virginia Tech’s Kevin Jones, and West Virginia’s Quincy Wilson are all candidates. … The cheering section for West Virginia was the largest and the loudest at the Dome this year for an opponent. … Walker on SU’s sloppy play: ‘You’re not going to beat a quality team when you fumble the ball. We put it on the ground (three) times today; they got two of them back. You can end the discussion right there.’

Published on November 21, 2003 at 12:00 pm