Right when it struck his ears, he realized how perfectly it fit.

‘That’s the word, man,’ Syracuse quarterback R.J. Anderson said. ‘Hungry.’

There’s no better way to describe the Syracuse football team’s feeling as it began spring practice Friday. Coming off a 4-8 season — its first losing season since 1986 — SU can’t wait for a chance to right the wrongs of a season ago.

‘We’re more hungry coming into this season,’ junior running back Walter Reyes said. ‘Four-and-eight, of course, is bad, and that’s just not the Syracuse way. We’re hungry right now to turn everything around.’

Even head coach Paul Pasqualoni, who normally guards his team’s mood as if it were gold at Fort Knox, admits there’s more riding on this year’s spring than in years past.

‘This year,’ Pasqualoni said, ‘there’s a lot of excitement but probably a greater sense of urgency to get things done after the disappointing season we had last year. I think the players here have always been hungry, but I think they’re probably a little bit hungrier this year.’

Indeed, Syracuse is downright ravenous. For the Orangemen to satisfy that hunger and escape last season’s shame, it has to answer many questions this spring.

SU’s biggest challenge is fixing a defense that delivered an uglier bottom line than Enron: 34 points, 304 passing yards and 476 total yards allowed per game, all Big East worsts. Those totals were also putrid enough to make the Orangemen No. 113 out of 117 Division I teams in total defense and dead last in pass defense.

The SU secondary, which lost three starters, will receive a boost from Diamond Ferri, a running back turned strong safety. The 5-foot-10, 206-pound junior, who sat out last season and attended Bunker Hill Community College in the fall, is slated for the starting role. Syracuse evaluated Ferri as a running back and a safety out of high school.

‘(Ferri) is just a really good athlete,’ SU cornerback Steve Gregory said. ‘He’s crazy out there. He’ll come down and hit you as hard as he can and try to take your head off.’

SU also moved Darryl Kennedy — a quarterback at Nassau Community College — from fullback to strong safety, and two of SU’s six secondary recruits — cornerback Larry McClain and safety Jeremy Sellers — enrolled in January to compete in spring practice.

Aside from the secondary newcomers, SU’s stable of defensive backs includes Thomas Whitfield as the first-string right cornerback and a competition between O’Neil Scott and Anthony Smith at free safety.

‘We got a lot of new guys in there that are excited about playing the position,’ Gregory said.

Left cornerback Gregory — maybe SU’s most surprising player last season — is the only returning starter in the secondary.

‘There’s more of a leadership role I have to take,’ Gregory said. ‘Just try to help out back there with the knowledge that I have, help everybody out with what I know already.’

SU’s passing offense fared as poorly as its passing defense. The Orangemen averaged 188 passing yards, a number that’s inflated by a 349-yard performance against Division I-AA Rhode Island.

The easy answer to this year’s quarterback question would seem like incumbent senior R.J. Anderson, who started SU’s first seven games last season before deferring to the outgoing Troy Nunes.

But head coach Paul Pasqualoni has declared the job more open than a 7-Eleven. His policy is that when the previous year’s starter — Nunes in this case — graduates, the position opens for competition.

If he earns it, redshirt freshman Perry Patterson will be SU’s signal caller. Xzavier Gaines — currently a reserve on the basketball team — is also a candidate.

‘The right way to go about it is to start over, open the position up,’ Pasqualoni said. ‘Having said that, we all know that Robin has more experience than both Xzavier and Perry. At the same time, we want to make it a fair and open competition.’

Linebacker is another cloudy issue for the Orangemen. As if the loss of leading tackler Clifton Smith wasn’t damaging enough, SU’s top returning tackler, Jameel Dumas, withdrew from school and will miss spring practice. His status for the fall is unclear, Pasqualoni said.

SU’s leading receiver, Jamel Riddle, will also miss spring practice because of personal issues.

Syracuse knows what questions it faces this spring. After their most painful offseason in 15 years, the Orangemen are eager to discover if they know the answers.

‘You’re kind of just real anxious to get back out there and get this thing turned around,’ Anderson said. ‘When you go 4-8, there’s gotta be some room for improvement. You wish the season could just start tomorrow.”

Published on March 30, 2003 at 12:00 pm