Reports of the demise of Warren Central’s defense appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Derrick Dixon and Shockey Shaw each returned an interception for a touchdown, and Warren Central turned in its second straight dominating performance on defense as it beat Natchez 42-20 Friday night.

The Vikings, who allowed 42 points in each of their first two games, followed up last week’s shutout of Vicksburg by picking off three passes and allowing just six points in the first half. Kamren Ellis also had an interception.

“We’re trying to be potent and explosive on both sides of the ball. We’re going to need that going forward,” Warren Central coach Josh Morgan said. “Natchez had a lot of speed, but overall we did pretty good. We’re doing better, and we’re going to need them to play big for us.”

D.J. Knight ran for two touchdowns for Warren Central (3-1), and Jesse Wilson threw two touchdown passes — one to Liam Hopson and the other to Larry Ferguson.

The Vikings jumped out to a 21-0 lead in the second quarter and took a 35-14 lead into the fourth.

Warren Central will now have an open date next week before going on the road to play Northwest Rankin in the Region 2-6A opener on Sept. 25. It has won three in a row since dropping the season opener to Wayne County.

“We talked about keeping the momentum and moving forward and doing good things, and we did that tonight,” Morgan said. “We still left a lot of plays out there, but we still made a lot of good plays.”