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West Chester Heads To Slippery Rock Saturday

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Division II West Chester University football team will play its first road game of the 2017 season on Saturday, heading out to Western Pennsylvania to visit Slippery Rock.

The Golden Rams opened the season up in style last Thursday, hammering visiting Bentley University, 51-9.

"A lot of positives from last Thursday night," West Chester head coach Bill Zwaan tells KYW Newsradio. "Paul Dooley, our starter [at quarterback], starts out the game 7 for 7 and throws a couple touchdown passes in there. He got off on the right foot. Then our defense, they allowed a drive that led to a field goal to start the game out, but after that they shut them down the entire first half, gave us a chance to kind of spread the score out a little bit."

Dooley, a sophomore, finished 12 of 15 throwing the football in his first collegiate start for 183 yards and three touchdowns. He was not intercepted.

"He also ran the ball pretty well (five rushes for 42 yards)," Zwaan says. "I think, in general, he was very poised back there. He found open guys. When the first guys weren't open he either found a second guy or tucked the ball and gained some yardage running the football. I was really impressed with how he handled himself as much as how he threw the ball."

This game wIth Slippery Rock on Saturday will be a big early challenge for the Golden Rams

"They are very, very good on offense," Zwaan says. "They have another transfer, graduate student quarterback from Youngstown State who has a great arm. He can make all the throws. Their wide receiver corps is excellent. That's kind of been their MO the last couple years is how good they've been able to throw the football, how good their receivers are, especially when they get out in space. So it's going to be a real challenge for our secondary this week. We've got to get some pressure on the quarterback up front and we're going to have to tackle when they are in the open field."

Last year these two teams met in West Chester with Slippery Rock winning, 36-28.

Saturday's game will kick off at 6:00pm.

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