Captains John O'Donnell, Sean Beahan, Carl Barnes, and Mike Mattei provided leadership to this season's Golden Rams (Photo Ray Doyle)Many may point to the East Stroudsburg loss as the game that cost the Golden Rams the season. While that loss was devastating, it was actually the Bloomsburg game that withheld West Chester from the postseason. Besides the improvement in their won-lost record, the Golden Rams needed the benefit of the head-to-head outcome against the Huskies. The missed opportunities were chronicled in that game report.
Although a turnover plus/minus of zero and ranking of 77th is nothing to wave a flag about, considering that the Golden Rams had a negative turnover margin in 2010 and 2011 means that 2012 has to be considered a success in that area. Takeaways on defense remained fairly flat; it was giveaways on offense that improved for West Chester.
The Golden Rams improved in the penalty area as well in 2012. They had the sixth fewest penalty yards per game in the conference with 60.3. This improvement may have been overshadowed by the timing of the penalties and the fact that West Chester's opponents had even fewer penalty yards per contest with 56.1.
The average score of all games this season was 35-24 in favor of West Chester. In the Golden Rams' four losses, the average score was 24-35 in favor of their opponents. At a high level, it's easy to see that the losses were truly team events - the offense and defense both performed below their season outputs on the scoreboard.
While 7-4 wasn't good enough to qualify for the playoffs, it was the best season since 2009. The Golden Rams went 3-0 against the PSAC West (Gannon, California, Clarion) for the first time since 2005 (Clarion, Indiana, Shippensburg).
West Chester was 4-1 at Farrell Stadium this season (Photo Ray Doyle)
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