MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Some homecoming.

At least the 58,133 patrons -- hundreds of whom headed for Mountaineer Field's exits in the third and fourth quarters yesterday when it was still a one-point game -- didn't boo Queen Megan Kinkelaar and King David Morris.

They booed the offensive execution. They booed the play selection. They booed about a half-dozen times minimum, a detectable outcry in a game where a 23 1/2-point favorite required a sizeable fourth-down, late-game defensive stop, the longest run from scrimmage in 22 years and the lowest amount of home victory points in 54 triumphs. Stick West Virginia's 17-6 defeat of Syracuse on a float, and the home folks might well get jeer.

"We got out of here with a win, but you'd never know it from our fans," said senior kicker-punter Pat McAfee, who became the program's all-time scorer with 334 points. "Everybody wants us to score 50 points. ... " Booing from some "fair-weather fans," he added, "just gets us more peeved than anything."

In a Big East Conference game without two-time league offensive player of the year Patrick White, whom coach Bill Stewart admitted sitting out due to a concussion, and again without red-shirting star middle linebacker Reed Williams, the Mountaineers struggled to their lowest victory point total since a 13-0 defeat of Maryland in 1996. Most every Mountaineers player but Noel Devine stumbled against a Syracuse defense ranked sixth-to-last of 119 major-college teams. In fact, it was Devine who came to his team's emotional rescue with his 92-yard run on a crucial third-and-7 from the West Virginia 8 with barely four minutes left.

"It was like a big boulder lifting off my shoulders," Jarrett Brown, substituting for White, said after Devine rambled for a career-high 188 of the Mountaineers' 268 total yards, their lowest offensive output since the previous time they were favored by three touchdowns or more: the infamous loss to Pitt in December.

"It was an ugly win," added Brown, who averaged just 2.2 yards per rush and a paltry 3.7 yards per completion (14 for 20 for 52 yards) on a balky right thigh. "But we pulled it off."

That the Mountaineers (4-2, 2-0 Big East), in winning their third consecutive game and the less-than-coveted Ben Schwartzwalder Trophy named for the ex-Syracuse coach and late Mountaineers alumnus, struggled against a Syracuse (1-5, 0-2) team generously permitting on average 36 points and 462 yards per game -- including 383 yards to Division I-AA Northeastern -- raised a pile of questions:

1. Why didn't Devine get the ball more often? For one thing, he begged off. "It was hot out there and I started to cramp up," said Devine, whose 92-yarder -- out of the newfound I-formation -- on a zone play around left end was the second-longest run in Mountaineers history, behind only Pat Randolph's 96-yarder in 1986 against Northern Illinois. Devine carried just once in the third quarter, six times in the fourth among 25 plays after a halftime when he had 87 yards on 11 totes.

2. Why didn't offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen run more plays out of that I-formation? Even though players contend the blocking is no different, such plays apparently keep defenders from reading shotgun hand-offs so easily. West Virginia gained at least 122 yards rushing on six plays with Brown under center, Will Johnson at fullback and the 5-foot-8 Devine aligned behind them. "If it helps Noel and the other kids ... ," Mullen began to say later. "We'll look at all those angles."

3. Why did lowly Syracuse outperform West Virginia in so many offensive categories where it ranked near the Division I-A cellar: 12th-to-last in time of possession (35 minutes, 16 seconds to the Mountaineers' 24:44); 10th-to-last in total yards (346 to 268); and fourth-to-last in third-down conversions (8 of 18 to 4 of 12)? "Possession time really makes me sick," Stewart said.

4. How did the West Virginia defense fail to capitalize on the five times McAfee punts pinned Syracuse inside its 20? "We let them out," Stewart said. Overall, "I'm very frustrated."

Cynics who claimed that Stewart has restored the program beyond the final, 11-victory days of Rich Rodriguez and back to the seven- to nine-triumph era of Don Nehlen might be surprised to know this: The previous time West Virginia went six games deep in a season without once scoring 30 points was 1979, the final year of Frank Cignetti. Heck, West Virginia clung to a 7-6 lead until three minutes and change into the fourth quarter, when McAfee's point-record field goal got the team into double digits.

Devine may deserve the most credit for the win, gathering the biggest yardage day by a Mountaineers running back in 22 games -- since Steve Slaton shredded Pitt for 215 in November 2006.

NOTES -- White, who on Friday had a CAT scan and an IMPACT test that showed him off his baseline and off "equilibrium," according to Stewart, is expected to play against his home-state Auburn in 12 days. ... No word on the prognosis for defensive lineman Pat Liebig, who missed his third game in a row with a concussion where crowd noise causes headaches, Stewart said. Mt. Lebanon's Doug Slavonic has started all three. ... Morgantown native Patrick Shadle had a Mountaineer Field-record 53-yard field goal for Syracuse.