West Chester Travels To Edinboro Saturday

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's a trip to northwest Pennsylvania this week for the Division II West Chester University football team as the Golden Rams visit Edinboro University on Saturday.

West Chester is 1-1 this season and coming off a 36-28 home loss to defending PSAC champion Slippery Rock last week.

"There were positives to take out of it," West Chester head coach Bill Zwaan tells KYW Newsradio. "Our kids hung in there, played them tough. We made a bunch of mistakes that hurt us. You make those kinds of mistakes against good teams, that's what's going to happen. But I feel like when we walked out of the game, our kids realized they can definitely play with this team, with Slippery Rock, we can play with everybody and if we just cut the mistakes out, we're going to win some of these football games."

Listen to the entire interview with West Chester's Bill Zwaan:

Junior quarterback Andrew Derr started this game for West Chester and completed 32 of 63 throws for 431 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for 31 yards and another score. But he also threw three interceptions. This was his first start since 2013.

"A lot of positives and then a couple of bad interceptions," Zwaan says of Derr's performance. "One of them wasn't his fault, but the other two he didn't make good throws on. So I think he took some good steps forward, having not played, really for a couple years, he's still a little rusty. Still made a couple of mistakes that a young starter might make, we just expect him to be more mature because he's a little bit older. But I think he'll learn from those mistakes and he played well enough for us to feel pretty good about him moving forward."

West Chester will face an Edinboro team that is off to a 2-0 start. The Fighting Scots have scored 75 points in their first two games, but they have also allowed 68.

"It's a new staff," Zwaan says. "So I think they are just really learning who can do what for their team. They've done some good things offensively, for sure. Their quarterback has played well, really well at times. But they've given up some points. So I think we're going to have to really establish ourselves offensively. This game will give us a chance to do that. Defensively, it will be a challenge for us, but certainly we've faced a couple of pretty good offenses up until this point. But these guys can score points, so we've got to go after them."

That quarterback Zwaan referenced is junior Jake Sisson. He is completing 61% of his passes through two games for 720 yards and seven touchdowns with three interceptions.

Saturday's game will kickoff at noon.