NEW ORLEANS — Armed with a tape recorder, a journalist strolled up to a Syracuse men’s basketball player seated unassumingly on a Louisiana Superdome locker-room table.

“OK,” the reporter said excitedly into his cell phone. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got Hakim Warrick right here.”

“I’m not Hakim,” SU walk-on Xzavier Gaines said calmly.

“You’re not?”

“Nope,” Gaines answered, pointing to the player seated five feet behind him. “He’s right over there.”

Red-faced, the reporter walked away without another word. Gaines, meanwhile, returned to his Subway roast-beef sandwich. Such is the anonymous life of a walk-on.

But with little fanfare, Gaines is doing something remarkable. As he watches the Orangemen play in the Final Four in New Orleans, he’s also thinking about Syracuse football, which began spring practice last week.

Gaines doubles as a backup quarterback on the SU football team. But if things go his way, he might not be a backup for much longer. SU head football coach Paul Pasqualoni has declared an open competition for the starting-quarterback job, and Gaines — who last season was a third-stringer behind R.J. Anderson and the graduated Troy Nunes — is in the mix, along with Anderson and redshirt freshman Perry Patterson.

“I’m looking forward to getting back there, getting my arm in and seeing what takes place,” said Gaines, who has three years of football eligibility remaining. “I’m not worried at all. I know I’m behind a little bit. But I know the offense pretty well now. It’s just the repetitions I’ve been missing at practice.”

He skipped two spring practices this weekend to join the basketball team in New Orleans. The week before, though, he passed on the Orangemen’s trip to Albany for the East Regionals to attend the start of spring practice.

Before Gaines walked on the basketball team in November, Pasqualoni warned him of impending conflicts and difficulties.

“(Football coaches) kept stressing the fact that it’s going to be real hard,” Gaines said. “They weren’t lying. It’s hard.”

Now that spring football practice has started, it’s become harder. Some days, Gaines endures football and basketball workouts, a double-life regimen that would make even Clark Kent cringe.

Gaines starts with football agility drills at 6:40 a.m. Then he heads to class from 8:30 till 2 p.m., and in between lectures, he mixes in weight lifting. After that, Gaines stops by the Carrier Dome for a two-hour basketball practice from 4 to 6 p.m. before attending a mandatory study table from 7 to 9.

“I don’t know how he does it,” SU center Jeremy McNeil said. “I heard that Donovan McNabb did it. I think it’s good. I wanted to play two sports. Actually, I wanted to play like five sports. I wanted to do wrestling, baseball, football, everything.”

Said walk-on Ronneil Herron: “It’s really hectic. I know playing football in itself is really demanding, really hectic. From the football players I know, if they’re not lifting, they’re watching film. I definitely respect what he’s doing.”

While the rest of the Orangemen met the media Friday, Gaines walked around the locker room with a camera, snapping candids of his teammates. He’s soaking up the basketball experience now, because he’s yet to decide if he’ll do it again next season.

“I’m in New Orleans,” Gaines said. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t do it at all. This is the commitment I made, and I’m going to live by it.”

Published on April 6, 2003 at 12:00 pm