After Greg Robinson delivered his nine-minute postgame sermon – fire and brimstone included – his players filed in one by one to the small room in the depths of the Carrier Dome.

It’s standard operating procedure after any game. But this time, the Syracuse players showed more anger than they have before. Blowout after blowout has mostly hushed the postgame player talk. Not Saturday. Not after allowing 55 points.

‘I’m sick of all of it,’ a despondent Jameel McClain said. ‘… I’m sick of the missed tackles. I’m sick of the score. I’m sick of losing. So to sum it up, I’m sick. But what can I do?’

‘It’s always hard when you get down early, turnover early. It’s like, ‘Dang, here we go again,” wide receiver Mike Williams said.

No visiting team has ever scored more points against a home Syracuse team in 118 years of football. In that room on Saturday, there was plenty to talk about.

In a season with already its share of lows, No. 13 West Virginia added another blow to the Orange. The Mountaineers crushed Syracuse, 55-14, Saturday at the Carrier Dome in front of 35,345 fans.

An emotional Greg Robinson, who suffered his worst margin of defeat as Syracuse head coach and dropped to 6-23 in his three seasons, stood at the podium for nine minutes at his postgame press conference, shouting more than he has all season – one sign that this loss was not like the other four.

‘We have to feel it for 24 hours – the pain of it,’ Robinson said. ‘That was painful because I’m telling you, we could have played that team, if we just clicked a little bit, all of a sudden it could have been a real interesting football game.’

The game was decided in the second quarter, when almost nothing went right for Syracuse (1-5, 1-1 Big East). Two crucial SU turnovers – most importantly a Keilen Dykes 20-yard interception return for a touchdown – sealed the game’s fate.

Syracuse scored on its first drive, a one-yard touchdown run by Curtis Brinkley, but that was all the Orange did when it mattered.

‘We got that touchdown off tackle. It was good,’ Robinson said. ‘We didn’t sustain it. I think the turnovers were what got us behind, and then all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, the score is up there.’

West Virginia (5-1, 1-1) totaled 486 yards of offense, 251 yards coming on the ground. Quarterback Pat White, who was a game-time decision to start after bruising his hip last weekend, tallied a combined 237 yards and two touchdowns, even as Syracuse put its fastest players on defense. But the misdirections, ball fakes and sheer athleticism were too much.

The Mountaineers simply had the ball too many times as Syracuse’s offense could barely stay on the field.

SU quarterback Andrew Robinson’s second interception of the game was the breaking point. Deep in his own zone, a screen pass play was blown up and two West Virginia defenders were hounding the quarterback. Robinson dumped it off to Taj Smith, but both quarterback and receiver didn’t see linebacker Reed Williams.

Williams dropped Smith and the ball popped into the air, right to the hands of Dykes, who scampered 19 yards for a Mountaineers touchdown less than three minutes into the second quarter.

In that quarter, Robinson was 0-for-6 with the interception and one sack. Two pass attempts were batted down at the line. His receivers dropped balls. Nothing worked. When it was all over, Syracuse had six fumbles – only one lost – but it showed the sloppiness.

‘They scored and we came back and scored and you could see, this could be interesting,’ Greg Robinson said. ‘But turnovers, they can kill you.’

Andrew Robinson’s first interception of the game, a tipped pass on a Smith slant route, led to West Virginia’s first score. Syracuse ran 13 plays in the second quarter, amassed seven yards and two first downs. Two drives went three-and-out.

It was the second week in a row that represented a regression on the SU offense. Two games removed from its stunning upset of Louisville, when the Syracuse offense gained 465 yards and put 38 points on the board, the offensive unit looks completely shell-shocked.

That starts and ends with the passing game, which sparkled against the Cardinals but has done little since.

Before a 61-yard touchdown pass to Williams in the third quarter well after the game had been decided, Robinson was 4-of-13 for 39 yards and two interceptions. He finished 5-for-15 with 100 yards.

‘Today I felt like I wasn’t on,’ Robinson said. ‘I made some mistakes, had some ball security problems, and it definitely wasn’t our best day.’

Even Greg Robinson didn’t expect the outcome to be this bad – bad enough to be one of the worst losses in school history.

‘I’m very disappointed,’ Greg Robinson said. ‘I expected to see a closer margin than it turned out to be. It’s frustrating and I think it’s a real challenge for us right now. We have to dig deep right now.’

Published on October 7, 2007 at 12:00 pm