Warren Central earns 13th win in a row against archrival Vicksburg

Published 1:05 am Saturday, October 19, 2024

By Ernest Bowker

Strange things seem to happen whenever Vicksburg High and Warren Central get together, and Friday’s match-up at Memorial Stadium was no exception.

Warren Central winning brought things back to normal.

The Vikings let most of a 14-point lead slip away and had more penalty yards than Vicksburg had total yards. They rode a dominant defense and just enough big plays on offense, however, to beat their archrival Vicksburg 21-13.

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It was Warren Central’s 13th consecutive victory in the River City Rivalry series.

“This is a big program win,” Warren Central coach Josh Morgan said. “We’re proud of our program. There’s a lot of people that we’re playing for. It ain’t going to be pretty all the time, and this was a gut it out, hard-fought win.”

Vicksburg (0-7, 0-2 MHSAA Region 2-6A) showed some grit as well. It fell behind 14-0 and was dominated for most of the first half, but rallied to make a game of it.

The Gators finished with 59 total yards. Warren Central had 80 yards worth of defensive penalties and 125 total on 15 flags.

“As far as how hard my kids played, they played hard and I’m proud of them. They’ve played hard every game,” Vicksburg coach Christopher Lacey said. “We’ve got a young group, they’re growing up, and they’ve just got to keep growing and keep fighting. Decide on Monday that you want to do the things right on Friday and we’ll be good.”

Warren Central (5-3, 2-0) scored on its first two series to take the early lead. After Eric Collins Jr. carried the ball on the first five plays of the game, Aden Greer finished off a 12-play drive with a 6-yard touchdown run.

Nash Morgan then threw a 32-yard TD pass to Jaylon Winters to make it 14-0 with 50 seconds left in the first quarter.

Greer finished with 101 rushing yards and a touchdown, and Collins had 98 yards and a TD.

“We couldn’t ask for a better start. We were locked in and ready to go, and talked about starting fast and taking the momentum. It can’t be perfect all the time and we understand that, but we would have been very pleased to go into half up 14-0,” Josh Morgan said.

The Vikings stalled after that, though, as Vicksburg’s defense settled in and eventually provided a game-changing play.

With less than three minutes to go in the half, Nash Morgan threw a high pass that was intercepted by Mincer Minor. Minor returned it 60 yards for a touchdown that got the Gators right back in the game.

“I’ve got a really good defense, too, and when you’ve got two really good defenses that’s how it goes,” Lacey said. “I think they had a couple of big plays and some drives that put them in it, but I’ve got a really good defense, too. We play defense at Vicksburg.”

Coming out of halftime, the Gators had their best offensive drive of the night. Aided by two 15-yard personal foul penalties against WC, the Gators cashed in with a 28-yard touchdown pass from Jamikal Maxey to Thomas McKnight.

The PAT was blocked to keep the score at 14-13, and Warren Central answered right back. Collins finished an 11-play, five-minute drive with a 5-yard TD run and Jonah Artman’s third PAT of the game pushed the margin back to 21-13.

Vicksburg’s next drive was a bizarre one. Once again assisted by penalties — three 15-yard personal fouls and one offside — the Gators were gifted 50 yards from Warren Central and gained 19 of their own. The drive lasted more than seven minutes and ended in a turnover on downs at the WC 15-yard line.

“We’re hustling and trying everything we’ve got. We’ve got an aggressive defensive and it’s a thin line where I don’t want to slow them down, but we’ve got to do better than that,” Josh Morgan said. “And we’ve got to do better with the pick-six and things like that. But we’ll worry about that on Monday.”

Warren Central then went on a 6 1/2 minute drive of its own that likely would have killed the clock if not for a Greer fumble. The Gators got the ball back at their own 42-yard line with 2:15 left but only went backward.

Maxey was pressured into two incompletions, then was sacked twice by Gavin Davenport and Ronnie Blossom to end the Gators’ chances.

Blossom had two of Warren Central’s four sacks in the game, and Larry Reynolds had one. The Vikings also had eight tackles for loss as a team.

“They’re getting better every week. I’m very pleased with them,” Josh Morgan said of his defense. “They had a pretty dominant effort last week and I think we’re getting better. Our preparation is getting better. And we should be good because there’s a lot of boys on there that have played a lot of football and are fabulous players.”

Maddox Lynch caught six passes for 44 yards to break Warren Central’s school record for career receptions. Trey Hall had 88 career receptions from 2020-22, and Lynch now has 92.

Lynch needs 126 more yards to set Warren Central’s record for career receiving yardage, set by Demond Patton from 2017-19.

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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