Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – CR’s Gabe Ward (5) and Chase Steubing react after one of the several big plays the team defense made against Merced.

By Ray Hamill — The Corsairs will be hoping for more of the same from their defense and to clean up some early-season miscues on offense when they travel to play San Jose this weekend.

Kickoff is set for Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m.

College of the Redwoods opened the new season with a reasonably comfortable 21-7 win over Merced College at the Redwood Bowl last weekend.

The CR defense was outstanding and gave up just one big play all afternoon, which resulted in the visitors’ only score of the game.

Offensively, however, it was a sloppy performance as eight new starters, including four on the offensive line, got their feet wet.

“We need less penalties and we need to catch the ball better,” head coach Jason White said, “We had some missed assignments, but honestly if we caught the ball better and didn’t fumble the ball we probably beat Merced by 40.”

The good news is that most of the unforced errors are fixable and White is expecting a better performance from his offense in week two.

San Jose, meanwhile, is coming off a bye and will be playing its season opener on Saturday.

And that makes it a little difficult to know what to expect from the Jaguars.

“We don’t know a lot about them personnel wise, honestly,” White said. “But I feel good because we got our first game under our belts and it gave us a chance to work on some things.”

Obviously White will be hoping for another strong performance from his defense, which came out of the starting gates on fire last weekend.

There was little to fault about the performance, with all areas of the defense contributing.

“The defense was extraordinary at every level,” White said. “Whether you’re talking about the D-line, the linebackers or the secondary, it was probably the best defensive game our kids have played since I’ve been here.”

And that bodes well for the season, as the Corsairs look to challenge for a conference championship and more.

Elsewhere in the American-Pacific 7 Conference on opening weekend, Los Medanos and Foothill each won their openers, with Foothill beating West Hills-Coalinga 35-6, and Los Mednaos beating Gavilan 40-14.

De Anza, meanwhile, lost 21-5 to Cabrillo, while Siskiyous fell 28-17 to Hartnell and Yuba lost 22-6 to Monterey Peninsula.