SYRACUSE - Cam Dantley is poised to step out of the long shadow cast by his famous father. It's been a long time coming.

Three years after making the Syracuse football team as a walk-on quarterback, the son of newly enshrined NBA Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley will make his second straight start for the Orange on Saturday - against No. 17 Penn State - and only the third of his career.

“We have to have a great team performance, protect the ball, and make good decisions,” said Dantley, who threw for three TDs in a home loss to Akron last Saturday in his season debut. “We like our chances, especially on offense.”

Since Greg Robinson succeeded the fired Paul Pasqualoni as head coach at Syracuse prior to the 2005 season, the Orange have won just seven of 37 games. They are 0-2 this season and have lost six straight dating to last November, which has placed Robinson in great jeopardy of losing his job.

“But we're all going to move in that direction. We're very serious about it and we have a lot ahead and we really want to make this work, we want to recover the great tradition of Syracuse.”

And now the burden has fallen squarely on the shoulders of a player who was never considered for the starting quarterback job in 2007.

Andrew Robinson was the prized recruit, the first quarterback Greg Robinson selected to play for the Orange and the only one in his class.

That was the allure - Andrew Robinson would be the man to help resurrect a program that had plummeted from the national spotlight.

But although he performed admirably last season as a sophomore - the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Robinson was 154-for-292 for 2,192 yards and 13 touchdowns with seven interceptions despite being sacked 50 times and pummeled countless others - he faltered in the season-opener last month at Northwestern and lost the job after Dantley repeatedly outperformed him in practice.

Dantley, who started one game last year when Andrew Robinson was injured, was 13-for-20 for 135 yards against Akron. He scrambled away from the rush and on the run threw a pretty 15-yard scoring pass to tight end Nick Provo to tie the game at 28-all early in the fourth quarter before the Orange defense collapsed.

Dantley was lured to Syracuse by Pasqualoni, passing up offers from Miami of Ohio and Kent State to try to earn a scholarship on the field.

The 6-1 Dantley played basketball through high school and said he received some college offers, but he had gravitated to football when he was younger because of the constant pressure of trying to match his father's exploits - Adrian Dantley played 15 seasons in the NBA, scored 23,177 points, and played in six All-Star games.

“It's been real tough for me,” Cam said. “It was always, ‘Your dad did this, your dad that.' ”