Cameron Dantley remembers last year’s match-up with Pittsburgh. How could he forget? After all, it was the former walk-ons first extended look at quarterback – a second half cameo in place of an injured Andrew Robinson.

It was also almost his first win. After an impressive second half showing, Dantley’s last-second prayer eluded former SU wide receiver Mike Williams, and the Orange settled for a 20-17 loss.

The situation is completely different this year. Dantley will make his fourth consecutive start Saturday at noon when Syracuse opens its Big East schedule against the Panthers at the Carrier Dome. He’ll have a full four quarters this time to avenge last year’s near-miss.

‘That was my real first big experience in a game,’ Dantley said. ‘Playing at Pittsburgh in an NFL stadium and coming into a situation in the second half where we had a chance to win. It really tested to see how I was going to handle the situation against them.’

For the most part, Dantley passed that test. On his second possession, he connected with Taj Smith for a 56-yard touchdown pass to tie the game at 10 – the first of his two touchdown tosses in the game.

The junior quarterback ended up completing 15-of-27 passes for 189 yards. He injected some life into a Syracuse offense that stagnated in the first half (50 total yards) and lacked any semblance of a running attack all day (30 yards on 31 carries).

Syracuse had the ball and a chance to win in the waning seconds, but Dantley’s last second heave to Williams was batted away.

‘We’ve all looked at that play lots of time, coaches and players,’ Dantley said. ‘It was kind of heartbreaking, but we did the best we could to come up with a big play in that situation.’

Syracuse will need a similar performance from Dantley this week if it’s to produce an upset in its conference opener.

If anything, this year’s match-up is more critical. Syracuse’s loss last year dropped the team to 2-7 – the season was already lost before Dantley’s failed heave. This time, the Orange has a chance to win its Big East opener for the first time in the Greg Robinson era. That’s something that could prove vital if Robinson is to engineer a turnaround and strengthen his tenuous hold on SU’s head coaching job.

‘Everybody’s 0-0,’ Dantley said. ‘Nobody’s played each other in the conference yet. Everybody’s pretty much starting at the same level in the spectrum.’

That’s one reason for optimism. Another is that Syracuse can breathe a bit easier after getting its first win of the season last Saturday against Northeastern. Dantley was 14-of-17 passing that game for 167 yards and a touchdown – playing a secondary role while the running game did the heavy lifting.

That’s been the formula with Dantley so far. Let the running game do most of the work and rely on Dantley to hit easy check-down and roll-out patterns.

‘He played well last week,’ Robinson said of his junior signal-caller. ‘He was very efficient. He did a good job running the ball a couple of times and he did a lot of things to keep it going.’

Dantley will likely have to be even better against the Panthers, a grind-it-out team that relies on a strong running attack to control the ball. Syracuse will have to be efficient and take advantage of all the scoring opportunities it gets.

Dantley wasn’t quite able to do that last year, but that doesn’t mean he’s lacking in confidence this time around.

‘We feel like going into any game we can play with anybody,’ Dantley said. ‘The fact that it’s been two close games the last two years with them, it shows it’s going to be a good battle. It’s going to be physical – we were physical with them last year and it went right down to the wire. So we know we’re capable of playing with them.’

jsclayto@syr.edu

Published on September 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm