When the playoff brackets revealed a second-round matchup with Northwest Rankin, a perennial contender in Class 6A, no one on Warren Central’s roster figured it would be easy.

After they played their worst game of the season and lost 10-0 in Game 1, they knew it for a fact.

The Vikings (21-7) rebounded Friday, however, to win Game 2 3-2 and stay alive. Now, everything they — and Northwest Rankin (21-9) — have worked for the past three months will come down to how they perform for a few hours.

Warren Central and Northwest Rankin will play the deciding Game 3 of the best-of-three series Monday night at 7 at Viking Field. It’s a one-game, do-or-die scenario that will send the winner on to face either Tupelo or Starkville in the quarterfinals, and the loser home for the summer.

“We’ve got to redeem ourselves in front of our home crowd. We didn’t want them to see that the other day,” WC shortstop Brooks Boolos said.

Game 1 at Viking Field was a disaster for Warren Central. It committed a season-high six errors — it had had a total of 32 in its first 26 games — and was run-ruled for just the second time in three seasons.

The Vikings had played well enough throughout this season that they knew it was an aberration. Still, Boolos said, some doubts lingered heading into Game 2.

“I was scared. It’s always in the back of your head that we might play like that again and this might be it,” Boolos said.

As it turned out, those fears were quickly erased. Booth Buys allowed one run in 5 1/3 innings, and the Vikings overcame a couple of early missteps to take a 3-0 lead. After hitting into two double plays in the first three innings, they scored twice with two outs in the fourth and on a two-out double by Tyler Vroman in the fifth.

They then escaped a pair of bases-loaded jams in the sixth and seventh innings to not only keep the season alive, but get their mojo back.

“When you bounce back from that, you feel like we’re good to go,” said Boolos, who got three outs in the seventh inning to earn a save in Game 2. “It’s a big win and motivation to see we can bounce back from something like that, because that was horrible. We hadn’t done anything like that all year. Uncharted grounds we were in, and to bounce back from that was really, really good.”

Warren Central coach Conner Douglas added that not just winning, but playing well, was good to see after the Game 1 loss.

“It’s the biggest. They know how good of a team they are when they don’t beat themselves, and (Game 1) was a prime example of that,” Douglas said after Friday’s win. “Tonight they came out and flushed it like they’re supposed to do, came out, played the game, had fun with it, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Now they need one more against a team that has proven itself time and again in the postseason. Northwest Rankin has won at least one playoff series every year since 2011, and reached the Class 6A semifinals in 2015.

The Vikings have a lot of respect for Northwest Rankin, Boolos said.

“I saw we had Northwest Rankin, and knew they didn’t have the pitching that we had but they’re always solid,” Boolos said. “They’ve got a really good program. They live in the playoffs. They just know how to play in the playoffs, so you know it’s going to be tough. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. This might be tougher than the next round, if we can make it there.”

After winning Game 2, Boolos added, the Vikings also have a lot of confidence.

“When you win something like that, here, at their park, when they just did what they did to us the other day when we handed them the game, now we’re just like, ‘We’re not going to do that anymore. Y’all just got lucky.’” Boolos said. “Now they’ve got to come to our place and we’re playing better than we did today. I promise.”

WARREN CENTRAL VS. NORTHWEST RANKIN

Class 6A baseball playoffs

Game 1: NW Rankin 10, WC 0

Game 2: WC 3, NW Rankin 2

Game 3: Monday, 7 p.m., at Warren Central