MORGANTOWN - Bill Stewart defended both his backup quarterback and his offensive coaching staff Sunday in the wake of Saturday's rather excruciating win over Syracuse.

Jarrett Brown, he said, wasn't as healthy as he would have liked. And many of the plays that fans booed during the Mountaineers' 17-6 win over the downtrodden Orange were not what they may have appeared to be.

Regardless of the reasons, though, Brown passed for only 52 yards and ran for just 18 more in replacing Pat White, who sat out the game because of a head injury he suffered a week early in a 24-17 win over Rutgers. And in large part because of that, the Mountaineers needed a 92-yard run from tailback Noel Devine with just over five minutes to play to finally close the door on a Syracuse team that has now lost 23 of 25 Big East games in the past four seasons.

"Yeah, he got nicked up last week [against Rutgers],'' Stewart said Sunday. "He got the heck knocked out of him. He had a thigh and a shoulder. We had one quarterback on the shelf and Jarrett played very hard and did a good job.

"After the game someone told me he wasn't real pleased with his performance. Well, he's a competitor. He was down on himself. That's my job and [offensive coordinator Jeff] Mullen's job and the rest of this team's job to get him back up. Jarrett Brown went into a tough situation and led his team to a victory. The last I looked he's 2-0 as a starter.''

Just barely, though, after the escape against Syracuse, a team that was a 231/2-point underdog even with White's status questionable. West Virginia faced the No. 114 defense in the country and until the late run by Devine had managed 177 yards of total offense and 10 points. By the second and third quarters, some among the 58,133 at Mountaineer Field were booing what appeared to be short-yardage plays in long-yardage situations.

"We've got the best fans in the country. They're just passionate. They want us to do so well,'' Stewart said. "But there are things that the fans don't see. They see the end result when the ball comes down maybe to a flat route.

"If we were out there throwing bubble screens all day, I'd boo too. But we weren't throwing bubble screens. We had three-level floods on, we had triangle reads - short, long and deep coming over the middle. We just missed some stuff.''

For instance, Stewart said the offense had spent much of the first half setting up a home run ball to Alric Arnett and appeared to have a golden opportunity to call the play when a Syracuse cornerback limped off the field.

"We'd been setting it up and setting it up and little No. 10 [Syracuse freshman cornerback Dorian Graham] came in, who was a youngster who had gotten beat in one of their games earlier,'' Stewart said.

"And just as we called the takeoff route against him he backed up about 15 yards. Well, the play had already been called and I did not want to audible with Jarrett. I didn't think he was comfortable at the time.''

The ball was thrown deep anyway and Graham broke up the pass. Many times, though, Brown chose not to force the deep ball and instead dumped it off in the flat, which brought the boos.

"They see the end result of the ball being in the flat,'' Stewart said. "But if you've got [all those options] and Jarrett doesn't think the deep routes are open, he throws the ball down. He did what he thought was right.''

The bottom line, of course, is that the one offensive call that was most crucial worked. That was the third-and-7 play from the WVU 8-yard line when Syracuse had a chance to make one more stop and get the ball back training just 10-6.

Devine took a fairly simple I-formation, zone-read play and broke it for that 92-yard score that put the game away. Stewart insisted it was more than just a running play designed to get what it could and keep the clock moving.

"I thought coach Mullen made a tremendous call with nine men in the box,'' said Stewart, whose team now has a little extra time before a home game with Auburn a week from Thursday. "We put motion in. We were in an I-formation. We brought orbit motion around, took the corner out and he and the safety kind of nicked each other.

"The blocks by Ryan Stanchek, Greg Isdaner, Mike Dent and Jake Figner, and even the backside block by Selvish Capers [were perfect]. It was blocked like it was [designed]. Tyler Urban had a nice block and then Will Johnson sprung him at the point of attack. Noel did the rest, took it [92] yards and it was a great thing to see.''

Reach Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.