West Chester Enters Critical Stretch In Schedule
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Division II West Chester University Golden Rams are playing some of their best football of the season at just the right time.
West Chester's won four straight games to improve to 4-2. They are 3-0 in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference East action. The next two weeks are key for the Golden Rams as they play two outstanding conference opponents in Shippensburg and Bloomsburg. First up will be Shippensburg on the road on Saturday.
West Chester's fourth straight win came this past weekend as they hammered a pretty good Kutztown team, 44-14.
"Real good football game overall," West Chester head coach Bill Zwaan tells KYW Newsradio. "Defensive effort was really tremendous against a good offensive team. Kutztown has some real weapons and our guys did a nice job of shutting them down. We put pressure on the quarterback the whole day."
Listen: Bill Zwaan with KYW's Matt Leon
On offense, West Chester got a huge performance out of sophomore quarterback Pat Moriarty. He dissected the Kutztown defense to the tune of 30 completions in 40 attempts for 437 yards and five touchdowns. He was not intercepted. Not bad for his sixth career start.
"He's cutting down on his mistakes," Zwaan says. "He hasn't really had many turnovers the last couple of weeks. And he's starting to go to his second and third receiver. That kind of means that it looks like he's starting to really understand the offense and not just hang on one guy which he was doing earlier in the season. Now if he doesn't like the one guy, he will go to a second guy and even a third guy at times. When he gets to that level, that's when you really see him become the next-level type quarterback, where he can really have a great season."
On Saturday, the Golden Rams will face a Shippensburg team that is also 4-2. The Red Raiders are 2-1 in the PSAC East.
"They're scoring a lot of points," Zwaan says. "They won 69-67 in five overtimes against East Stroudsburg (on October 3rd). They put (64) points on Seton Hill earlier this year. So there is no question they can score points. They've got a real good offensive scheme and they've got talent. They've got running backs, receivers, the quarterback's playing well right now. So you're going to see a good offensive football team again this week, which means we've got to put points on the board to stay with them."
Shippensburg is averaging 38.2 points a game here in 2015. Last week, in a 44-34 win over Lock Haven, they rolled up a season high 611 yards of offense.
Zwaan says the next two weeks really hold the key to the season for his team.
"Definitely," Zwaan says. "We put ourselves back into the mix by winning the last four. Now we're in the mix with these two (teams), with Shippensburg and Bloomsburg (who is also 4-2 and tied with West Chester for first in the PSAC East with a 3-0 mark). So after the next two weekends it's really going to clarify where we stand."
West Chester and Shippensburg will kickoff at 1:00pm on Saturday.
