A graph of the first half of Warren Central’s football season would be filled with peaks and valleys. The second half is a straight line breaking through the top of the page.

It’s obvious which one they prefer.

The Vikings (7-3) won five consecutive games and, with them, their second straight MHSAA Region 2-6A championship. It’s gotten them back to the Class 6A playoffs, where the real season begins Friday night with a home game against Saltillo (3-8).

“We’re definitely getting better. We’ve been after that for a long time. It’s been a journey for sure, but we’re getting hot at the right time and we’re still getting better, which is encouraging,” Warren Central coach Josh Morgan said. “Our team has done a good job of wanting to get better and being coachable. We expected to be here and we’re here. Now we have to turn it up a notch and continue that climb.”

This is a rematch from last year’s opening round game that Warren Central easily won 46-19. Morgan cautioned that last year’s results are no guarantee that this year will be a walk-over.

Saltillo earned the No. 4 seed from Region 1-6A by beating Center Hill 21-0 last week. It struggled for much of the season, but Morgan said this year’s roster has a lot of returning players that are a year older and better than the last time they came to Highway 27.

“They’ve got a lot coming back from last year. The thing that stands out to me is they’re tough and physical. They do a lot of things offensively and defensively that we have to be prepared for. They’re very multiple in what they do. They create challenges that we have to be prepared for,” Morgan said.

Warren Central, though, has been on quite a roll. Its defense allowed a total of four touchdowns and 32 points in five region games. An opportunistic defense that generated 14 takeaways in five non-region games has been replaced by a dominant unit that gets three-and-outs by the bushel. All five region opponents were held to under 300 yards of total offense.

“I think we’ve played better defense. We’ve been more consistent. And that’s been without creating all of those turnovers,” Morgan said. “We’re still preaching takeaways and still want to be that team that takes the ball away and creates plays. We’ve just been fortunate enough to be really dominant and play that way.”

Another thing Warren Central will have in its favor Friday — and beyond — is home field advantage. Because of their status as a No. 1 seed and how the MHSAA determines who hosts playoff games, the next time the Vikings will get on a bus is to go to Hattiesburg for the state championship game on Dec. 7.

If the Vikings win this week, they would host either South Panola (8-2) or Ridgeland (6-4) next Friday, and then the North State championship game on Nov. 29.

“It’s set up for us, for sure. Our kids have earned that. There’s a couple things that come into that. It comes back to the old Al Davis saying — we’ve just got to win and the rest is taken care of,” Morgan said.

Morgan added that he wants Viking Stadium to provide a true homefield advantage against opponents making two- and three-hour bus rides from North Mississippi. As the last Warren County team still playing — Vicksburg High, St. Aloysius and Porter’s Chapel were all eliminated from the postseason last week — he’s hoping to see plenty of support from not just those wearing red, but green, purple and blue as well.

“We’ve got to have our crowd and our old Vikings be a factor in this. We don’t get the full, maximum advantage of that if we don’t have that raucous crowd, and we don’t have that support, and our family and community coming out and supporting these guys,” Morgan said. “We’ve got a really good football team and we’re going to need them to play a part in this. We want that old Highway 27 mystique to be there for us. We’re calling on everybody because it’s going to take us all to get this done.”

SALTILLO AT WARREN CENTRAL
• MHSAA Class 6A playoffs, first round
• Friday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m.
• Radio: 105.5 FM