SPORTS EXTRA / FOOTBALL ‘99: COLLEGE PREVIEW : Hayes Precisely the Receiver USC Needs : Trojans: Senior doesn’t have Soward’s speed, but he gets close to Palmer and runs the right routes.

Windrell Hayes is the USC receiver you don’t really know.

R. Jay Soward has the blazing speed.

But Hayes runs the great pass routes.

Soward has scored 27 touchdowns for the Trojans.

Hayes? He has scored only two for USC, --but if you include his two seasons as San Jose State’s leading receiver, he has caught more passes in his college career than Soward, 121 to 110.

Soward didn’t show up for voluntary summer workouts.

Hayes not only showed, he attached himself to quarterback Carson Palmer, went home with him on days off and stayed overnight, enjoying the breakfasts Palmer’s mother, Danna, fixed every morning.

Talk about a guy who knows who butters his bread.

It’s a wise receiver who makes friends with his quarterback.

“That’s what I hear. I tried to spend as much time with him as possible,” Hayes said. “I guess you could say it was planned. Since we connected so well in the spring, we tried to keep it going.”

He is yin to Soward’s yang, and that’s no knock on either.

“I think me and R. Jay complement each other really well,” Hayes said.

“He’s the burner, I’m the more physical of the two. I’m probably going to get more of the underneath stuff. But if a team sleeps on us, we might reverse it. I might be taking the go route, and R. Jay’s coming across the middle.

“I like to think of when Miami [the Dolphins] had the Marks Brothers--Mark Clayton and Mark Duper. Duper was the burner, and Clayton was more the possession-type receiver. You’ve got a combination like that, it makes the offense really hard to stop.”

That’s what USC is hoping, anyway, and Coach Paul Hackett is very high on Hayes, considering he caught only 24 passes a year ago--nine of them in a breakthrough performance against UCLA.

“I see him as a premier, go-to, clutch guy,” Hackett said. “When he arrived at USC, he was overweight and out of shape and hadn’t played football in a year. But from the moment our off-season program started, he was there.

“The team has tremendous confidence in him. The quarterback has tremendous confidence in him. I think he’s ready to make big plays, critical plays. He’s a very gifted wide receiver. He may not have the greatest speed, but he probably has the best hands on our team. He’s a tremendous complement to R. Jay because he won’t allow people to load up on R. Jay like they did last year.”

Complementary, yet contradictory in so many ways.

In fact, here’s another.

Some people always seem to expect Soward to end up in trouble, even though he never has been disciplined for anything more than skipping class. Hayes got into serious trouble last year in Lodi in Northern California before arriving at USC as a junior transfer. He faced a felony charge in a bad-check scheme until he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and paid $8,500 in restitution.

” I know I made a stupid decision,” Hayes said. “I still get mad at myself for doing something so stupid. And it’s so obvious that you could get in trouble, and I still went along with it.”

When he was arrested along with the friends he says masterminded the scheme, Hayes was the one the law enforcement officials recognized because of his football career at Stockton’s Franklin High and two seasons at San Jose State.

“The first thing the sheriff said when he took me to the holding cell was, ‘Well, it looks like you won’t be able to go to USC,’ ” Hayes said.

“It was kind of like they looked at me like, ‘How could you do this, when you have so much going for yourself?’ ”

Hayes wondered himself.

“I just couldn’t believe I’d done it,” he said, saying he got mixed up with new friends during the year he spent at San Joaquin Delta College after leaving San Jose State.

“I should have been smarter about the situation, which surprised me. I usually analyze everything before I do it, think of the consequences and stuff like that. I don’t know, in this situation, I didn’t.”

The consequences could have been serious. Hackett, a new coach at USC, didn’t need the headache, and he took heat when he allowed Hayes to join the team after pleading guilty and being sentenced to probation.

“I’m a great believer that what you do before you get to USC is different for a whole lot of reasons--atmosphere, surroundings,” Hackett said. “When you come to USC, it’s because we’ve seen some redeeming qualities in you as a student and a football player.

“What happened in the past is of diminished importance. It’s not eliminated, but it’s diminished. . . . Windrell has been nothing but first class since he arrived.”

Now, after a season as a backup behind such receivers as Billy Miller and Larry Parker, people will get to see Hayes run more of the precise, efficient routes that are his trademark.

Even Soward tips his hat. He nicknamed Hayes “Scissors” for making the best cuts in college football, and the name has stuck.

“I’m a big believer in technique, as far as being a receiver,” Hayes said. “I think technique can get you anywhere you want to go. Even if you’re not the fastest player, if you have technique, you can get from Point A to Point B just as fast as someone who runs a 4.3, if you know how to get there.”

Hayes took a less-than-precise route to USC. He had wanted to go to USC out of high school but says he decided to stay close to home. In his first game as a freshman at San Jose State, he caught four passes in the Spartans’ 45-7 loss to USC.

He left San Jose State in 1996 after catching 97 passes for 1,383 yards his freshman and sophomore seasons, an accomplishment that still ranks in the top 10 on the school’s receiving list.

“San Jose State wasn’t, I don’t want to say big enough, because that’s a D-I school, but I thought I could do more at a bigger school,” Hayes said. “I could do more with a better surrounding cast.”

He ended up with a pretty good quarterback named Palmer, and another in Mike Van Raaphorst.

And he’ll take the ball any way he can get it.

“If it’s a route, if the ball’s coming, I like it,” Hayes said.

“Comeback, post, corner, slants, hitches, I like ‘em all.”